Editorial: Where’s the love?

Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2007 | 7:07 a.m.

A ll mankind loves a lover, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote . So you might figure that the wedding capital of the world would be awash in love.

Unfortunately, the competitive zeal of the Las Vegas wedding chapels may be scaring the lovebirds away.

Wedding chapel representatives are fighting for the business of the betrothed on the steps of the Clark County Courthouse, outside the wedding license office. Couples are forced to walk a gauntlet of chapel employees, all vying for their attention and their business.

This goes beyond friendly competition. There have been allegations of violence between employees of rival chapels, not to mention the regular venom and jostling on the courthouse steps.

This has been a recurring problem over the years, but recently it seems to have taken a turn for the worse.

Common decency would dictate that there be a sense of civility, even among fierce competitors, but not so among the chapel owners. Las Vegas City Councilman Gary Reese is considering a plan to ease the tensions. "If we don't do something, someone's going to get killed," Reese told chapel owners this year.

Joe Schoenmann reported in the Las Vegas Sun last week that the most recent attempt to cool the simmering dispute between police and chapel owners ended with one chapel owner asking another "not to hurt anyone in my family."

This is the business of love?

There is a fear that the infighting is contributing to the drop in the number of weddings in Las Vegas, and it is estimated that weddings bring in hundreds of millions of dollars a year to the Las Vegas economy.

Reese's proposal to make wedding chapels obtain privileged business licenses, which would give the City Council more control over their behavior, deserves to be heard.

Somehow love needs to be restored to an industry that thrives on it.