Same Sex Marriage - how to enter?

[David C 0]

Is there any way of automatically (or manually) entering same-sex marriages, now that more and more states (and foreign countries) are recognizing them? Currently, the "Add Person"" button defaults to the opposite sex to enter a spouse. The program won't let me change the sex to "?" if any children are specified, or if a gender has been otherwise assigned by the program.

 

If this isn't currently possible, is there any timeline for when the "Add Person" button will show "Spouse," and let the sex be specified?

 

Thanks,

David Coats

[Virginia Blakelock 0]

David -

 

Instead of using Add Spouse, add a Marriage tag to one of the people. Both principals can be the same sex. For more discussion - including workarounds for adding the children in same sex unions - see the TMG mailing list.

 

For recent discussions, use the TMG archives search engine here:

 

http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/search?path=TMG

In the Body field, enter: same sex marriage

In the Date field, for current messages, enter: 2013

Subscribe to the mailing list here:

http://lists.rootsweb.com/index/other/Software/TMG.html.

 

Virginia

[David C 0]

Thanks, Virginia. That should work. Are there any plans to automate the process, so that the "Add Person" button will show "Spouse," and let the sex be specified?

David

[Michael Hannah 0]

Are there any plans to automate the process, so that the "Add Person" button will show "Spouse," and let the sex be specified?

While WhollyGenes never announces explicit plans for future features, I would doubt this would be added. Same sex marriage enters the ever active debate about whether software should focus on "family" relationships or "genetic" relationships. Trying to do both I think would make the software extremely more complicated. WhollyGenes has previously stated that the primary purpose of its "genealogy" software is genes/genetics. In the program the concept of a child having only two parents, one of each sex, is for tracking genetics. At least TMG does not require the two parents to be married, which is required/assumed by many other genealogy programs. As you have discovered it does seem TMG defines its concept of "spouse" as the other of two genetic donors, not the other person in a Marriage. TMG has separated recording the event of creating a Marriage relationship which only involves two people of any sex, from recording a genetic relationship of a child and two parents of opposite sex. That separation is why a Marriage event between same sex partners is so simple and possible to record in TMG. While TMG can express these modern "family" relationships and events, I believe most of its terms and functions and assumptions will remain focused on the "genetic" purpose of the software.

 

Just one user's opinion,

[David C 0]

Thanks, Michael,

From the genetics standpoint, that makes perfect sense!

David