COURT DECISIONS | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 18, 1903

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 29, No. 46.

COURT DECISIONS.

MORMONS—SEALING ORDINANCES AND CHURCH DIVORCE.—The sealing ordinance of the Mormon Church, founded on “Revelations on the Eternity of the Marriage Covenant,” contained in the Book of Doctrines and Covenants of the Mormon Church (as practised by the Mormon people), is a marriage ceremony, contemplating marriage for time and for eternity, and not for either time or eternity alone. The Supreme Court of Utah, in Hilton v. Roylance, 69 Pacific Reporter, 660, holds that the sealing ceremony, whereby the contracting parties agree and are declared by a duly authorized church official to be married for time and eternity, creates a valid and common-law marriage between parties believing and in good faith participating therein, the part relating to eternity being mere surplusage; and this is true, tho the sealing ceremony was performed at a time when the wife was on her supposed deathbed, and after the husband had been assured that she would die, and the sealing was performed under the belief that they would thereby be husband and wife after death, and in performance of the said tenet of the church only. But the church divorce of the Mormon Church, whereby parties who have been sealed as husband and wife under the Mormon sealing ordinance agree, under the authority and with the consent of the church, to dissolve their marital relations, is not a valid divorce, tho the parties to it believe it to be valid and thereafter go through a marriage ceremony with other persons.

BOOTBLACK STAND AS A “PUBLIC ACCOMMODATION.”—A decent, reputable and respected colored citizen of the City of Rochester applied to the operator of a bootblack stand for a shine, tendering at the same time, the customary dime in payment therefor. The operator refused to undertake the task, however, for the sole reason that he did not shine the shoes of colored men. Action was commenced as a result to recover the penalty for this refusal, on the ground that it was a violation of the New York law which provides that all persons shall be entitled to full and equal accommodations, etc., of inns, restaurants, hotels, eating houses, bath houses, barber shops, . . . and all other places of public accommodation or amusement. Upon appeal, the Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Fourth Department, in Burks v. Bosso, 81 New York Supplement, 384, held that as the policy of the law is against extending the prohibition to the civil rights of the colored man, a liberal rather than a narrow interpretation should be given to such enactments, and that the plaintiff should recover.