Agency ready to issue licenses

With the state Senate poised to send a marriage equality bill to Gov. Neil Abercrombie’s desk Tuesday, the Department of Health says it is ready and willing to implement the law by its Dec. 2 effective date.

Dr. Alvin Onaka, the state’s registrar of vital statistics, said Friday that his agency, which manages marriage certificate applications, won’t need to do too much to enable same-sex couples to apply because of changes that were required when civil unions became legal Jan. 1, 2012.

Since an online system was installed for both marriages and civil unions when the state enacted the civil unions law, Onaka said letting two people of the same gender apply online for a marriage license will be like flipping a switch.

"We had already accounted for it in the civil unions program," Onaka said.

The marriage application system currently flags and prevents applications that note two males or two females, he explained, but it will no longer bump those applications from the mix once same-sex marriages become legal.

The transition is expected to be seamless because the program has already been tested to accept applications of same-sex couples for civil unions.

Printed marriage certificates, in turn, will also require a face-lift.

Onaka said the department is looking into personalizing the process by allowing applicants to choose "bride and groom," "groom and groom," "bride and bride" or "spouse and spouse." Couples who apply for a civil union, however, will still be offered only "Spouse A" and "Spouse B" terms, he said.

"(We’ve) had experience labeling things not ‘bride and groom,’" Onaka said. "They have to now marry those two possibilities. … That’s why we chose those three (options)."

As with changing the application process when civil unions were passed, Onaka said the department shouldn’t have much difficulty changing labeling because it has already gone through it.

Onaka said the department has been getting calls from civil union partners wondering what they have to do to convert their relationship to a marriage, and the simple answer is to get married.

Senate Bill 1, the marriage equality bill up for a final vote before the state Senate Tuesday, states that couples will not need to terminate their civil unions or reciprocal beneficiary relationships before marrying because the marriage will automatically do that for them. Onaka encouraged people to apply online because that will greatly ease the transition from civil union, or reciprocal beneficiary, to marriage.

"You could see where a paper system would never be able to do that quickly," he said.

In that same vein, Onaka said, the department plans to work diligently once the law is in place to educate its employees, marriage application vetting partners, officiants, the public and visitors about what the law entails.

"It’s more like labeling and filtering (that needs to be done), but that doesn’t mean that people still don’t have a lot of questions," he said. "I think one of the biggest challenges is to be able to not only inform the public in Hawaii, but being able to inform the public that comes into Hawaii to enter these unions, so our biggest, I guess, challenge is to be able to educate all the people who want to participate … and those who need to implement it."

Department Director Loretta Fuddy told House lawmakers during last week’s marathon hearing before the Judicial and Finance committees that the department would not need extra funding to prepare for same-sex marriages.