Here's the poop on "outside the church" weddings...

Here's the poop on "outside the church" weddings...

I'm not inclined to be a careful researcher nor am I a dedicated statistician, so take that into consideration as I rant about the unbalanced ledgers of the marriage-making business here in my home state of Arkansas.

I've recently posted a couple of blogs on marriage: "Let's fix up marriage- Part I" and "Let's get into the marriage-making business" where I've attempted to point out how religion has an unfair upper hand over non-religion. Well... I'm still on the same war path for this blog post.

To any couple wanting to have a civil marriage ceremony here in Arkansas, here's the poop. Finding a location to conduct your non-religious wedding and finding an appropriate administrator won't be as easy a task for you as it will be for the couple who wish to wed in a church.

I had to do my own quick tabulations on the number of Arkansas churches vs Arkansas courthouses, but even as inaccurate as my figures may be (and I admit that they're likely off by a rather significant percentage) the deck is so obviously stacked favoring religious marriage that its staggering. There are something on the order of 3443 Arkansas church locations (check my addition for the number of Arkansas churches here: Adherents.com - Religion by Location) and fewer than 300 wedding-appropriate courthouses in 75 counties. WOW.... Can you say 10 fold?

I suspect that looking into the numbers of churches vs courts in most states will yield similar results. Does anyone else think we atheists need to get busy to make a few changes?