WASHINGTON - A clerical error within the official Supreme Court transcript of this morning's proceedings resulted in a 25 minute ban on "heterosexual marriages" throughout the United States.
"It was just a mistake," confessed Bill Davenport, the official court transcriptionist. "I was typing fast, the autocorrect got ahead of me and I hit enter without looking at it. I just wanted to get to lunch."
Although technically illegal for almost a half-hour, few of the nation's different-sex marriages noticed. Most, like Eileen and Hank Fasbender of Duluth, Michigan, read the news with a curious shrug before finalizing their Starbucks order while continuing their argument over Saturday's "Sing Your Face Off."
However others, like Jane and Alex Marshall of Hammersmith, Oklahoma, almost immediately turned themselves in to local police for violating the ban. "The law is the law, even if it's for 25 minutes," Jane Marshall told police and reporters afterwards in a hastily prepared press conference. "It doesn't matter if I agree with it or not, everyone has to obey the law otherwise everything just becomes chaos."
Almost immediately, Hammersmith police chief Dale Hinderman released the couple under their own recognizance with a cup of coffee and half a bagel each, shaking his head slowly.
"It's an interesting legal precedent, temporarily making every heterosexual marriage in the country unconstitutional," commented William Chadwick, emeritus legal professor at Yale University and author of the best-selling "A History of Stupid Laws." "Does it matter how long it really was? Technically speaking, does everyone have to get married again in order to have a truly legal union?" Chadwick paused deep in thought. "Nah that's stupid," he concluded.
Photo Credit: Flickr/Charles Fettinger.