A Stitch in Haste

Could be:

Jonathan Herland, a 29-year-old Canadian who immigrated to Israel four years ago, and Ayal Walerauch, 26, have lived together for two years. In July 2005 they wed in a civil ceremony in Toronto. However, the Interior Ministry refuses to recognize their marriage.

In March, two homosexual couples petitioned the High Court under similar circumstances. Both couples married in Canada, and had the marriages approved by Israeli consuls there.

In their petitions ... the couples argue that when the Population Registry is approached to change a person's marital status, High Court precedent forbids the Registry from making religious considerations as long as the action has been legally recognized abroad.

I'm not going to pretend to know anything about Israeli law, but this fact pattern sounds comparable to reports of civil servants who refuse to perform legal same-sex marriages (e.g., in Massachusetts or Canada) on "moral grounds." This "Population Registry" appears to be nothing more than a clerical service and therefore has no authority to interpret any law — only to obey it. Just as gays cannot "sneak in" gay marriage through the back door, neither can scrivener bureaucrats sneak in an Israeli "DOMA" either.

You can debate whether recognizing same-sex marriage is the proper purview of the legislature or the courts, or both, or neither, but you can't debate that clerks should stick to clerking and not grant themselves the power of judicial review.

Meanwhile, I wonder how the "defenders of traditional marriage" in the U.S. will spin this situation, given that Israel certainly qualifies as a "Judeo-Christian nation." Or maybe they'll finally admit that when they say "Christian," they really do mean "Christian" and not "Judeo-Christian" (or whatever).