Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dVHMvw2YfE&start=372

It's a little after nine in the morning in Provo, Utah.
And this morning, in a county government building here, a man sits down at a desk and opens a laptop.
He isn't a bishop. He isn't a judge. He works for the county clerk. And according to his calendar, he is marrying people today. A lot of people.
Nobody is in the room.
No bride, no groom, no parents, no flowers, no mormons. There are two witnesses, because Utah law insists on two adults over eighteen. Then he clicks "join".
A couple appears on the screen.
It's already evening where they are. Nine hours ahead.
Before he can marry them, the State of Utah now requires him to read them a sentence - one that was written into the law this year.
"A marriage solemnized according to the laws of the State of Utah through online remote appearance may be invalid in the country where the parties to the marriage reside."
Which seems weird and unromantic, especially on a wedding day. Unless you know where the couple is.
They are not in Utah. They are not in the United States. They're in Tel Aviv.
He marries them anyway. They say yes from Israel, the certificate is issued in Utah and posted across the Atlantic. Then the next couple appears.
Also from Israel. Then the next. And the next.
This one clerk's office has married couples from China, Kenya, Azerbaijan, Madagascar. But Israelis are the biggest foreign group using it by a distance: about three thousand couples in 2024 alone, roughly one in every three foreign couples Utah County marries.
So: why are thousands of Israelis, every year, getting married by a government clerk in the most Mormon corner of the most religious state in America - over a video call, in a country most of them have never set foot in?
And why does the State of Israel have to recognize their marriage when Utah does?

@Selin-d9z
7:49 The fact that she calls it Israel and then shows videos of Al Aqsa mosque that muslims are no longer allowed to use is crazy what the actual fck

Religion is dumb. Stop killing kids.

also:

this guys says

@StCrimson667

Fun fact! It's also because of this system that Israeli women don't have an inherent right to divorce! In Israel, because marriage is a religious matter, the Orthodox priests mandate that BOTH partners in a marriage must agree to a divorce. This has become such a problem that many Israeli women are forced to do things like PAY their ex-husbands to agree to the divorce and there's a huge number of women who spend years, even decades trying to get a divorce while their husbands go around and marry OTHER women.

For comparison, in Saudi Arabia, marriage is ultimately a civil matter and so, while religious authorities might get involved during a divorce, a woman in SAUDI ARABIA has the legal right to a divorce if she's wants one on the ground of her own legal authority.

annnnnnnd:

this person says

@ChewBlueGoo

I guess the simplest answer is to live and marry where you are wanted?

Also isn’t there some story about how the LDS Church decided to baptize holocaust victims in their graves… which would mean that they did not actually qualify for baptism?

I could have that story wrong, tbh it’s not interesting enough for me to look further into. This was told to me by my daughter’s grandmother recently, and I sort of shelved it. Since then I’ve noticed there is quite a connection between LDS & Israel, indeed. So what’s that all about?

....Cause theyre afraid of the robbed Indigenous Palestinian ghosts which they walk over every second of every day?