Texas Family Code, Chapter 2 (“The Marriage Relationship”), Subchapter C (“Ceremony and Return of License”) provides, in relevant part:
[sec.] 2.202. Persons Authorized to Conduct Ceremony
(a) The following persons are authorized to conduct a marriage ceremony:
(1) a licensed or ordained Christian minister or priest;
(2) a Jewish rabbi;
(3) a person who is an officer of a religious organization and who is authorized by the organization to conduct a marriage ceremony; and
(4) a justice of the supreme court, judge of the court of criminal appeals, justice of the courts of appeals, judge of the district, county, and probate courts, judge of the county courts at law, judge of the courts of domestic relations, judge of the juvenile courts, retired justice or judge of those courts, justice of the peace, retired justice of the peace, or judge or magistrate of a federal court of this state. . . .[sec.] 2.205. Discrimination in Conducting Marriage Prohibited
(a) A person authorized to conduct a marriage ceremony by this subchapter is prohibited from discriminating on the basis of race, religion, or national origin against an applicant who is otherwise competent to be married.
(b) On a finding by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct that a person has intentionally violated Subsection (a), the commission may recommend to the supreme court that the person be removed from office.
Read literally, this would mean that even members of the clergy (who are authorized by this subchapter to conduct marriage ceremonies, see sec. 2.202(a)) may not discriminate based on race, religion, or national origin. Priests and rabbis would have to conduct interfaith marriages, even if they oppose them. Since Jewish ethnicity is generally seen as a “national origin” (and in some old statutes, a “race”), a rabbi who refuses to marry two people because one of them isn’t ethnically Jewish would likewise be acting illegally. (As I understand it, many rabbis will marry even Jewish atheists to other Jews, but not non-Jewish atheists; they would thus be discriminating based on Jewish ethnicity/national origin/race, not based on religion as such.)
I strongly suspect that sec. 2.205(a) was only intended to cover judges (see sec. 2.202(a)(4)) who are authorized to perform marriages, and sec. 2.205(b) supports that interpretation. Because of this, and because of a reluctance to interfere with religious activities by religious clergy — an interference that would likely be an unconstitutional entanglement with religion or possibly an unconstitutional coercion of a religious act, and thus an Establishment Clause violation — I doubt that Texas courts would interpret sec. 2.205(a) literally. Still, it’s too bad that the statute is drafted so sloppily.
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