Republicans in Oklahoma, like Republicans in a lot of other states, know the source of this country’s woes. It’s not a dying economy or the perpetual state of war, it’s homosexuals. To fight against this scourge they have been busy trying to get amendments to state constitutions prohibiting same-sex marriages. They’ve also been busy rewriting marriage laws when they fail to prohibit same-sex marriage hard enough. In Oklahoma they are trying to ban the recognition any secular marriage certificates:
House Bill 1125, sponsored by Republican State Representative Todd Russ, is a radical measure that would end secular marriage licenses in the state. In addition, the bill would bar all judges and other secular officials from performing marriages in Oklahoma.
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Under the legislation, atheists and others not wanting to be married by a religious official could file an affidavit through the court clerkâs office claiming a common-law marriage.
But there’s a flaw in this plan. I happen to be a Discordian pope and one of my official pope powers is to create new popes. I hereby offer to make anybody living* in Oklahoma an official pope so they can issue marriage certificates. Since they would be popes they would also be able to define what sorts of marriages they would be willing to recognized.
* Any Discordian knows this is a unnecessary offer since every man, woman, and child is already a pope.
What a worthless law. It would take 5 minutes to work around. I was ordained by the Universal Life Church 15 years ago.
It’s a church, but the most religious thing about the ceremonies I performed was when I closed with “Poof, you’re married.”
Hello fellow brother. I too am ordained by the Universal Life Church Monastery. And, yeah, that’s about as easy of a workaround to this law as one could get. It took me all of five minutes to fill out a form and get credentials dropped into the mail so I could perform weddings.
You did it the hard way. I printed out my own certificate. By the time I performed a ceremony and had to file it, a friend’s kid had colored all over it with blue crayon.
I once got in trouble working at a collection agency for leaving messages as “Reverend Jason”.
Fun fact: you used to be able to achieve ULC sainthood by ordaining 25 other people, MLM style. I am technically a saint, but I don’t have the certificate to prove it.
Eh, it was easier getting an official looking certificate sent to me consider the State of Minnesota has to recognize my ordination in order for me to be able to perform weddings. And it amuses me to have an official looking certificate to show to people who question my ministerial credentials.
But ordination credentials are still far less impressive compared to being a pope, which is the title I most often go with.
Dakota County had no problem recognizing my self-printed certificate, complete with crayon vandalism.
Pope is a good title. Can you get promoted from A pope to THE pope? Bribes in the right places, maybe?
You mean that one pope that thinks he’s the only pope? Nah, I wouldn’t want to get downgraded like that.