These laws seem to assume that every marriage or wedding ceremony is for the purpose of getting legal recognition from the state. Carrick is challenging that concept, and Judge Judith Levy has ordered the state to respond this week and answer whether Michigan's laws allow "civil and criminal sanctions of persons who improperly solemnize marriages authorize the state to impose those sanctions when the ceremony is purely private in nature, and not intended to have legal effect?"
Clergy should not have to be lawyers or law-enforcement officers. We are here to argue that the government should honor the right of all adults. If the state offers legally registered civil unions, domestic partnerships, or marriage, it should do so  without excluding consenting adults based on bigotry. However, if someone wants to have a ceremony and not have the state record it, that should also be their right.

Carrick says he doesn't know if anybody has been prosecuted for actually violating the law. It would be tough to track, because it's considered a misdemeanor. What Carrick wants is to prevent a situation where prosecutors believe it's up to their discretion as to whether they can prosecute.
Carrick is doing a great thing.
"If they don't tell the answer and a judge doesn't order it, a prosecutor can say it's up to the prosecutor to decide," Carrick says. "'It's my opinion—it's what I'm going to do.' Prosecutors have used [laws against cohabitation or adultery] to threaten people to get them to testify in hearings. They say, 'We are going to prosecute you on cohabitation or adultery parts of the law unless you testify.'" Carrick says he wants to make sure prosecutors can't use the vague wording of these laws to do the same to those who have marriages that aren't recognized by the state of Michigan.