Gene Faux
Springville
The mortality rate for licensed drivers in this state is less than 1 percent. But the death rate for licensed marriages is more than 50 percent.
To get a marriage license all you have to do is prove you are of legal age and pay a $40 fee. There are no tests, no required courses, no expectations from society at all.
In Utah, you can be legally married (with consent from parents and a juvenile judge) at age 14, but you must be 16 to drive. Does that make sense?
If we issued drivers’ licenses the same way, would the mortality rate go up? Of course it would, especially if the expectations were no more than those for a marriage license. Everybody could drive as they pleased and any casualties would simply be wards of the state.
It doesn’t make sense. A marriage license is a first step in the formation of the most basic component of society and yet we levy virtually no expectations until after disaster strikes and then we pick up the pieces and require counseling and course work for all the victims when it is usually too late. And each time society moves a little closer to the brink.
I believe it is time we raise the minimum nuptial age to 16 and put some meaning in the marriage license with requirements and expectations that will bring respect for that sacred institution.
