A law recently enacted in Texas requires couples to take an eight-hour ?successful marriage? class before receiving a free marriage license. Those who decline to take the course will have to pay $60 in order to receive a license, which is double the current fee.

The law has been compared to others designed to compel healthy behavior, such as ?click it or ticket? seat belt campaigns and anti-smoking efforts. But getting the government involved in teaching marriage skills is even worse than the other invasive Nanny State laws that increasingly afflict us.

Marriage is an institution ordained by God and it can only succeed on His terms. Yet ?religious content? is impermissible in the government-imposed ?successful marriage? instruction mandated by Texas.

It's bad enough that government presumes to require a license for couples and churches to solemnize a covenant over which the state has no proper jurisdiction. Requiring couples to be catechized in the state's secular assumptions about marriage borders on blasphemy.

Let us stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.