Rensselaer Journal, Volume 12, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 January 1903 — BOYCOTT DIVORCEES. [ARTICLE]

BOYCOTT DIVORCEES.

Protestant Ministers Refuse to Perform Marriage Ceremonies. Washington dispatch: When divorcees desire to remarry they must go outside of Washington to find a clergyman to perform the ceremony. All the ministers of the Protestant denominations in this city have agreed to institute a boycott against divorced persons bent on trying matrimony again. As the Roman Catholic clergy are bound by their church laws not to administer the sacrament of marriage to divorced persons the divorcees must go to a justice of the peace or other civil functionary when they desire to marry. The first case of the working of the boycott came to light when a couple from Virginia were compelled to return unmarried to that state after trying more than half the clergy in the town. The boycott is made sure in its operation by the new law by which marriage II censes are issued direct to the officiating minister.