Stateless marriage

Stateless marriage April 30, 2015

Yellowhammer News reports that the Alabama state legislature is considering getting the state out of the marriage business: 

“State Senator Greg Albritton (R-Range) saw his bill to remove the state government from the marriage business clear its first hurdle Wednesday, after it passed out of the Judiciary committee unanimously.

“SB377 would remove the duty of confirming marriages from county probate judges and allow marriages to be recorded by the state after filing a simple contract between two people eligible to be married that is solemnized by a pastor, attorney, or other authorized witness.

“This means that should the bill pass, only heterosexual couples will be eligible, but if gay marriage is legalized across the country by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, that eligibility would be expanded to homosexual couples.”

As Albritton says, this is back to the future: “When you invite the state into those matters of personal or religious import, it creates difficulties. . . . Go back long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away. Early twentieth century, if you go back and look and try to find marriage licenses for your grandparents or great grandparents, you won’t find it. What you will find instead is where people have come in and recorded when a marriage has occurred.”

As Scalia said during the oral arguments, a SCOTUS decision in favor of a Constitutional right to same-sex marriage ends in an impasse: If it’s a Constitutional right, pastors won’t be able to able to pick and choose which marriages they bless. They’ll have to perform same-sex weddings or give up signing heterosexual marriage licenses.

The Alabama bill offers a way out of the impasse, one that puts the onus not on pastors but on the state that encroached into the marriage business in the comparatively recent past. It looks like one of the most promising, and most peaceable ways out of the impasse. Roll Tide!


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