LOL.  The REALLY rotten thing about this is that they changed our indices to Party A and Party B for a few months after the Calif. State Supreme Court legalized same sex marriages, then changed them back to Groom and Bride when Proposition 8 was passed at the November ballot.  This effectively changed at least one party, randomly, to a implied-opposite sex person.  A Common Man-on-the-Street, coming in to search records would probably not know or think to review such matters in this way, as no special notices are posted as to such facts.

Robert certainly assessed the situation well.  Changes to the law to allow same sex marriage would certainly simplify some aspects of research.   On the rare occasion where using marriage indexes would help in research, keep these search parameters in mind.  Even with Bride / Groom, I've seen the parties mis-indexed, one to the other, so running it both ways even in a state where gay marriage never occurred, can be a smart research technique.