A relevant
article that I found to deal with both was
about a man from Florida who wanted to take his wife’s last name after they were married. He was able to secure a new passport and all proper documentation that he needed in order to assure that the name change had taken place, or so he thought. A year later the DMV of Florida sent him a letter claiming that he had “obtained the license by fraud” and that his license would be suspended by the end of the month since he had not paid the $400 filing fee or waited several months as usually required for the change.
about a man from Florida who wanted to take his wife’s last name after they were married. He was able to secure a new passport and all proper documentation that he needed in order to assure that the name change had taken place, or so he thought. A year later the DMV of Florida sent him a letter claiming that he had “obtained the license by fraud” and that his license would be suspended by the end of the month since he had not paid the $400 filing fee or waited several months as usually required for the change.
This
situation touches on both constraints listed above by looking at one point in
the article where it is made clear that usually in order to change your last
name and not have to pay for it, you must be a woman who is recently married. However, in Florida there is no law stating
that men cannot change their last names to the woman’s if they so desire. You can see how “equals” (males and females)
are not being treated equally when it comes to changing your last name due to
marriage. In the article it also
discussed how in only a few states there is a law in place stating that there
is a waiver for changing your last name after marriage no matter what gender,
meaning that in most states it only applies to females who want to change their
names after marriage.
I
personally feel like the man in the article is completely right in trying to
fight the DMV on this issue. More states
should pass legislature similar to the states where it is not gender specific
in name changes. It is not fair for them
to only use the name change waiver for women in Florida, when it is just as
plausible for a man to want to change his name after getting married. Also, I cannot find a justifiable reason why
men should have to follow this law in states where it only specifically
addresses women, making the law a target for criticism in those states. According to Shafer-Landou, tradition and law do no have the final decision on what is right and wrong. (6) I agree that even if the tradition is that a woman takes the male's last name, it should not be considered wrong if the male wanted to take his wife's name.
Link to the Article:
Works Cited:
Adams,
David. “Florida man accused of fraud after name change in ‘act of love’”.
Yahoo!News.
Accessed January 28, 2013. http://news.yahoo.com/florida-man-accused-fraud-name-change-
Shafer-Landau, Russ.
"Introduction." The fundamentals of ethics. New York:
Oxford University
Press, 2010. 6-7. Print.
I completely agree with Will, Lazaro Sopena should be able to take his wife’s last name. The state has no right to disallow the name change. First, they let him know he could not change his name a year after he changed his last name from Sopena to Dinh. He was told the name changing is only for women even though Florida does not have a law against men changing their name after marriage. If Lazaro is not allowed to change his name after marriage, then why are other people allowed to change their name whenever they want, like Chad Ochocinco who changed his name from Chad Johnson. He did not change it for a marriage he changed it because he wanted to have his last name to be the number on his jersey in Spanish, and it is not even the correct way to say “85.” It does not make sense that Chad Johnson, a role model as an NFL player, can change his name to Spanish numbers, but Lazaro cannot change his last name to the last name of the women he loves.
ReplyDeleteIt is disappointing how in our American culture people are so dead set in their set ways. It reminds me of part of a reading from The Fundamentals od Ethics that Russ Shafer-Landau says that philosophy is easy to teach to those who do not have an opinion but to those who already are set in their ways it is extremely hard to change their minds. As seen in this article where a man is denied his right to change his last name because in American Culture the women takes the male last name or hyphenates it. This isn't a one in a million chance occurrence that in America someone is discriminated against. But because America is a melting pot of many cultures trying to find their place there will be some instances of discrimination or worse but everything is progressing although slowly but just as surely laws will change and then hopefully opinions will change for the better.
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