With this herring I thee wed
British woman ‘marries’ dolphin, tying the net after 15-year courtship

JERUSALEM - Sharon Tendler met Cindy 15 years ago. She said it was love at first sight. This week she finally took the plunge and proposed. The lucky "guy" plunged right back.

In a modest ceremony at Dolphin Reef in the southern Israeli port of Eilat, Tendler, a 41-year-old British citizen, apparently became the world's first person to "marry" a dolphin.

Dressed in a white dress, a veil and pink flowers in her hair, Tendler got down on one knee on the dock and gave Cindy a kiss. And a piece of herring.

"It's not a perverted thing. I do love this dolphin. He's the love of my life," she said Saturday, upon her return to London.

Tendler, who said she imports clothes and promotes rock bands in England, has visited Israel several times a year since first meeting the dolphin.

When asked in the past if she had a boyfriend, she would always reply, "No. I'm going to end up with Cindy." On Wednesday, she made it official, sort of. While she acknowledged the "wedding" had no legal bearing she did say it reflected her deep feelings toward the bottlenosed, 35-year-old object of her affection.

"It's not a bad thing. It’s just something that we did because I love him, but not in the way that you love a man. It's just a pure love that I have for this animal," she said.

While she still kept open the option of "marrying human" at some stage, she said for now she was strictly a "one-dolphin woman."

She's hardly the jealous type, though.

"He will still play with all the other girls there," she said, of their prenuptial agreement. "I hope he has a lot of baby dolphins with the other dolphins. The more dolphins the better."



http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10694972/

Wow, insaneness. But, if she's happy than whatever.

That is so not right. I'm sorry, but how can a human marry a creature. Not right, if you ask me. Plus the fact that they made it legal. And here they are making a right against gay people getting married. I'd rather have gay people marry, at least there both human. If they can have humans marry animals, why not humans marry humans regardless of gender.

I can kind of understand this woman. I don't think it's right for to go as far as marrying the dolphin and making it into this whole civil union-type of bond but once again, I understand that this woman really loves the animal and she felt the need to certify that bond between them.

How about that? They went to same sex marriges to humans and animals marrying. I think one of the next steps we're going to see is a marrige between more than 2 people.

But Cheers to flipper. I wonder what he did at his bachlor party...

I think they saw it more as an 'eccentric' person showing their attachment to their animal friend, many of us have long term animal companions who accompany us into the older years etc but yeah, I don't see how it could be legal for many reasons including the non-human/human ratio especially since we can't communicate fully with dolphins in order to certify full mutual consent and understanding of the marriage ritual and meaning. As long as it's not perverted/sexual I have no problem with it other then it actually being legal and the implications including but not limited to the homosexual issue already mentioned.