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Sununu on point on marriage issue

By Staff | Feb 5, 2018

Gov. Chris Sununu has come out in favor of raising the legal marriage age to 16 for teens living in the Granite State.

A daily newspaper’s online poll last week indicated that 67 percent of its respondents favored raising that age to 18. A group of people who must be just trolling the poll – 2 percent of the more than 2,500 respondents – said their shouldn’t be any age restriction. Good grief.

We agree with the 67 percent in the poll who want the age to be 18, although Sununu’s proposal is much better than what exists now – 13 for girls, 14 for boys.

Neither of the existing ages makes any sense. We can imagine that there are “mature” kids of 13 or 14, but there are different meanings to “mature” when it comes to how they behave in school and what they would face in a marriage. Even adults find out after taking their vows that a supposedly life-long commitment is a little different in actuality than in theory.

And how would a 14-year-old boy support a family? Would a 13-year-old girl get a job to help support a household? Or do they just live with someone’s parents? Good luck.

Sixteen is better than what we have now and Gov. Sununu should be applauded for realizing that this must change.

But all things considered, 18 is better.

And please, don’t even give a thought to the “no age restriction” people. That’s just nutty.

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