Some friends got the wrong end of the stick, I think, connecting two unrelated phenomena to account for a couple’s inability to get a courthouse wedding in Oklahoma. They seemed to be under the impression that courthouses had stopped doing weddings in response to the awkward legal situation in which Oklahoma’s legal and constitutional commitment to actual marriage is ignored by some of her courts, and denied a hearing in the Supreme Court.
But this is not new:
[2007] An Oklahoma judge has put an end to the daily wedding docket in Oklahoma County courthouses, effectively ending the practice in the state. The decision, handed down by presiding Judge Vicki Robertson, set Friday as the final day that brides and bridegrooms to be can go before an assigned judge to take their vows, The Oklahoman reported Tuesday. The county was the last in the state to offer a daily wedding docket.
(source: Oklahoma courts end daily wedding docket)
And this has only passed one house of the Oklahoma legislature:
[HB 1125] Marriage licenses; deleting issuance of marriage licenses; providing for marriage certificates and affidavits of common law marriage; effective date.
(source: Bill Information)
I’m not sure I’m in favor of HB 1125, but I do see the effort here to both honor real marriage and extricate Oklahoma from a hard-to-win constitutional crisis.
However, if officials were simply refusing to provide any cooperative service to provide civil weddings in order to avoid being compelled to make “legal” filings of known falsehoods, I would still support their heroic grasp of their basic moral obligations. I find it appalling that one should even have to call it “heroic” to refuse to lie in court filings.
And make no mistake about it: to knowingly and freely tell two people you know are incapable of marriage “you are married” is a lie. Something we all know is just plain wrong.
There are reasons we need mercy, folks:
Do you not know that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?
(source: Romans 2:4 RSVCE)
WE
ALL
NEED
MERCY!
THERE
ARE
NO
EXCEPTIONS!
Get the picture?
…
Whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For no human being will be justified in his sight by works of the law, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.
But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction; since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God
(source: Romans 3:10-23 RSVCE)
It really is that simple. And that hard.
Struggling?
