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Fort Wayne Mayor Tom Henry has passed away after a brief battle with cancer.

Judge: atheist group cannot solemnize marriages

A U-S District judge has ruled against atheist organization the Center for Inquiry in its bid to strike down Indiana’s marriage statute as unconstitutional.

Marriage in Indiana is a two-step process: receiving a marriage license and making the marriage official.  The state’s marriage statute specifies who can perform that second step – the clergy of any religious group and certain government officials like mayors and judges. 

By disallowing celebrants from the Center for Inquiry to solemnize, the CFI claimed the state was favoring religion and making non-religious people unequal under the law.  Judge Sarah Evans Barker disagrees, saying the CFI’s complaint was about an inconvenience, not unconstitutionality. 

She also rejected the claim that CFI and its non-religious members are a “suspect class” with a history of unequal treatment. 

But CFI-Indiana executive director Reba Boyd Wooden says atheists are one of the few groups it’s still considered acceptable to denigrate.

“If we were denying the equal rights to Jews or Muslims or LGBT people or an ethnic group, people would not accept that at all,” Wooden said.

Barker says the statute provides for non-religious alternatives.  Wooden says the organization will appeal the ruling.

Brandon Smith is excited to be working for public radio in Indiana. He has previously worked in public radio as a reporter and anchor in mid-Missouri for KBIA Radio out of Columbia. Prior to that, he worked for WSPY Radio in Plano, Illinois as a show host, reporter, producer and anchor. His first job in radio was in another state capitol, in Jefferson City, Missouri, as a reporter for three radio stations around Missouri. Brandon graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia with a Bachelor of Journalism in 2010, with minors in political science and history. He was born and raised in Chicago.