Oklahoma just said you can only get married if you're religious

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What say should the state have in marriage? That's a great question that many have been asking for a long time. But now the State of Oklahoma has answered that question in a fairly bizarre way...

Instead of saying that the State will have no role in marriage, instead of recognizing any agreement between consenting adults related to marriage, the State has mandated that it will back away just enough to allow clergy and clergy alone to conduct marriages. It will recognize marriage conducted only by officially recognized members of religious clergy.

So you can be gay or straight... as long as you go to church... or temple, or a mosque. Get the picture?

That means if you aren't particularly religious, the State of Oklahoma will not recognize any marital contract formed between consenting partners, whether heterosexual or homosexual.

House Bill 1125 was approved by a Republican majority, and now goes to the state Senate for consideration. Many glossed over this important detail about the State's refusal to recognize marriage rights if the marital contract was not conducted via a religious ceremony and clergy. Instead, initial reactions from many who wanted to see the state removed from policing marriages, was one of gratefulness.

But the State was never saying it would back off of marriage. The State still ultimately decides what marriages it will or won't recognize. Far from making marriages more free of State imposition, the Oklahoma just forced everyone who wants state-recognition of their marriage to undergo a religious ceremony.

Rep. Dennis Johnson, a Republican, said "Marriage was not instituted by government. It was instituted by God. There is no reason for Oklahoma or any state to be involved in marriage."

But there is little historical evidence that "marriage was instituted by God." The marital contract predated religion and can be found in the Code of Hammurabi from Ancient Mesopotamia, thousands of years ago. Marriage was practiced in non-monotheistic cultures even during Biblical times, as noted in the Biblical Genesis accounts of Egypt.

The idea that the Bible originated the concept of marriage is just not historical.

So if the State wants to really back away from policing marriage, it should say that it will not give preferential treatment to people who undergo religious ceremonies to "validate" their marital agreements with one another.