Thursday, February 4, 2010

Showing Same-Sex Marriages in RootsMagic 4

After reading George Geder's blog post, Legacy 7.4; Same Sex Marriage Workarounds on his blog, Geder Genealogy, I became curious as to whether or not my program of choice, RootsMagic 4 would be able to show same sex marriages.

So I checked.  To be honest it took me a while to make it work.  But for the most part, I got it to work.

As you can tell, I made it so that Mark and Miles are married.  However, on the Family View of the screen, Mark is still listed as "Mother".


When I look at the details box for Miles, you can tell that I can change the labels from "Father" and "Mother" to "Partner" and "Partner".  The new labels show up when I create reports.

But I haven't been able to figure out how to change it on the family view.  Maybe this is a question for Bruce Buzbee?

I'm really curious to hear how other genealogy programs handle this situation.

Update: I have received an email from Bruce Buzbee, informing me that the labels will be fixed in an upcoming update of the program.  Every program has bugs and needs updates and I know RootsMagic is a company that will fix what they say they will.  Don't expect the update out tomorrow because it might take some time to fix, but it will be fixed

15 comments:

Unknown said...

Thanks for checking this out. I was curious, but hadn't had the time to investigate it myself.

Daniel Horowitz said...

This is MUCH more easy in Family Tree Builder Elyse.

Just one click on the sex selector of the person and DONE ;)

You should try it one day.

Regards
Daniel Horowitz

Lynn said...

Thanks Elyse, this is a subject I find fascinating with the ever changing face of today's family, our software certainly needs to be flexible. I will take a closer look at both RootsMagic 4 and Family Tree Builder.

Amy Coffin, MLIS said...

Thanks for the update. Bruce's quick response is exactly why I use RootsMagic as my main program. Wonder how long it would have taken to get an answer from ancestry? Thank you for putting a product to task, Elyse!

Randy Seaver said...

Good job, Elyse. I got this far also, but since George posted something I decided not to.

NickMGombash said...

Very interesting, Elyse! I may need to buy new software soon. I use PAF and honestly love the simplicity of it, but there's no possible way you can do same-sex marriages in this program. The LDS do not approve of same-sex marriages. As much as I love all the efforts of the LDS in the genealogical world, they're unfortunately very supportive (as in donations) for Prop. 8 in Cali. I doubt PAF will ever become same-sex compatible.

Elyse said...

@Daniel - Yes I know that FTB is capable of showing same-sex marriages. It is one of the things that I love about FTB.

@Lynn - Today's family really is ever changing and hopefully the family tree programs will keep up. One thing I wish genealogy programs will add would be a "raised by" label, which will be more and more important in the years ahead as grandparents, aunts and uncles, step parents, etc. raise some of the kids of the world.

@Amy Coffin - That is a huge reason why I love RM.

@Randy - Maybe you should consider making an article like this for FTM. You have FTM right?

Sally J. said...

Elyse, I think a "raised by" relationship link or tag or would be very handy for a lot of people.

And yowza, that's responsive customer service - I mean, you didn't even have to contact him directly, did you?

Gprofessionals said...

This is a great point raised by you. I have never researched on the same, but you did a great job by searching on the same. I would also go through my Genealogy Data.

Lynn said...

Following this conversation closely, as it remains an important issue. Not only in how we will define our families in our pedigree charts but how will the census in future years define our family. I posted about this very topic back in Dec. The post
'Defining Today's Family' at The Armchair Genealogist. Keep the conversation going.

Dennis said...

Grandpa will probably haunt me, but I turned him into a female ;-)

You have to make a gedcom, edit it with notepad. Look for the "1 SEX F" that is associated with the person & change the M to F. Then import into a new database.

Works with legacy & rootsmagic.

Anonymous said...

Hi Elyse,

Thanks for the shout out and taking up the banner on this issue.

The folks at FTB and RM are 'on it' and should be commended.

Hopefully the leaders at Legacy, FTM and the rest will get on board and this will become a non-issue.

Peace,
"Guided by the Ancestors'

Kirsty F Wilkinson said...

I recently upgraded to 'Family Historian' version 4 (UK based genealogy software). Their website at www.family-historian.co.uk claims that this version offers 'full support for same sex relationships' although it's not a feature I've had any reason to try out as yet!

Kirsty

Dennis said...

Another option, GRAMPS supports same sex marriages & it's free open source software. Runs on Linux, Windows & MAC. I really like the portable version, runs off my USB stick.

Steve Danko said...

Family Tree Maker has permitted the entry of same sex marriages for many years. One just needs to select the correct sex for each of the two spouses and everything is displayed correctly.