Atheist May Sue If Law On Las Vegas Officiants Won't Change

December 14, 2008

Author: Ashley Powers

Source: The Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-weddings14-2008dec14,0,5458048.story

In a city launched by shotgun weddings and quickie divorces, and which offers the chance to be wed by faux Liberaces, King Tuts and Grim Reapers, there remains at least one nuptial taboo: You can't be married by an atheist.

Michael Jacobson, a 64-year-old retiree who calls himself a lifelong atheist, tried this year to get a license to perform weddings. Clark County rejected his application because he had no ties to a congregation, as state law requires.

So Jacobson and attorneys from two national secular groups -- the American Humanist Assn. and the Center for Inquiry -- are trying to change things. If they can't persuade the state Legislature to rework the law, they plan to sue.

Jacobson, who spends most afternoons reading online or dining at a nearby buffet, is an admittedly reluctant plaintiff. But he's willing to fight on principle, recalling one time he couldn't: In the 1960s, the Army demanded that his dog tags note his religion. He reluctantly chose Judaism, which reflected his ancestry if not his beliefs.

"One of the things I like to do is stand up and say I'm a nonbeliever, so you know you're not alone," he said recently.

For years Mel Lipman, a friend of Jacobson's and president of the American Humanist Assn., had presided over nonreligious weddings in Las Vegas. But he belonged to the Humanist Society, a secular branch of the Humanist Assn., whose tax status as a religious group satisfied the clerk's requirements.

When Lipman and his wife moved to Florida this spring, Jacobson -- a balding man with a thin, white mustache and a trace of his native Philadelphia in his voice -- decided to become the local atheist celebrant.

"But I'm not going to do it by saying I belong to a religious organization," he said. "That's a sham, because atheists are not religious."

Jacobson filled out an application to perform marriages, but sidestepped the questions on religion. County Clerk Shirley Parraguirre said she had little choice but to reject it.