Lawmakers, trying to ferret out the profit-hungry, said weddings must be among a minister's "incidental" duties. Drive past the string of neon-lighted downtown chapels, and you'll see that didn't quite pan out.
Clark County issues nearly 100,000 marriage licenses a year and boasts dozens of places to exchange vows -- atop Harley-Davidsons, in Renaissance costumes, aboard gondolas -- 24 hours a day. The competition is so fierce that in recent years, employees at rival chapels have accused one another of slashing tires and shouting death threats. "Someone is working at all of these chapels," said Parraguirre, whose office doesn't have the resources to track down ministers flouting the law. In fact, she worries that if the criteria to become an officiant changes, her staff will be "bombarded with people coming in and just doing it for a job."
But Bob Ritter, an attorney for the American Humanist Assn., argued that when a celebrant marries a couple, he is acting as an agent of the state. Therefore, it's unconstitutional to block someone from holding that position based on his religion -- or lack of it, he says.
"Many atheists and agnostics have . . . deeply held beliefs," Ritter wrote in a letter to Parraguirre. "Are not their beliefs entitled to the same respect?" Nevada law, he continued, implies that "the religious are more trustworthy than the nonreligious. This is a bigoted assumption."
Most state laws regarding who can wed couples are akin to Nevada's, Ritter said. At least three states, however, allow notaries -- who are licensed to administer oaths and act as witnesses -- to preside over "I do's." Ritter hopes Nevada legislators will embrace something similar.
If not, Ritter might have success in court, said Lynne Henderson, a law professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Judges performing ceremonies, for example, don't have to meet religious criteria, so it's absurd to make anyone else do so, she said. Officials could regulate celebrants in other ways, such as making them get training.
"It's very weird," Henderson said, "to try to support these laws in a city of 24-hour wedding chapels."
--
ashley.powers@latimes.com
