From the Charlotte Observer as reprinted in the Roanoke Beacon, Plymouth, N.C., April 13, 1900
Proposition to Regulate Marriages
The Governor of Colorado is credited with a purpose to include in his next message to the legislature a recommendation that there be established in each county a board with power to examine all persons contemplating matrimony, with authority to refuse license to such persons as it may find physically and mentally unfit to get married we all talk more or less about paternalism, but this is a government taking charge of the citizen right. All states, perhaps, have laws forbidding the marriage of insane persons under age, and this, of course, is altogether proper, but further than this the state has nothing to do with the purposes of those who may be matrimonially inclined. That is strictly the business of the contracting parties, their parents or guardians. If the right of government to regulate marriages to the extent suggested is conceded, there would be no limit to which it might not invade the rights of the individual. We believe that in years long gone it was a rule among the Moravians of this state that when a young man concluded that he wanted to get married he laid his case before the church council and it selected a wife for him. That was a large waiver of personal rights; at the same time the applicant made it voluntary, or if he were not willing to make it he had the option of quitting the communion. Indeed, it is further told that a young Moravian named Waugh did not like the girl selected as a wife for him and in consequence seceded from the church, and, after the fashion of Romulus and Remus, founded a city of his own—the present Waughtown.
The Governor of Colorado would, however, arbitrarily forbid marriages in certain cases, though both parties were willing, and capable of making the contract, which is going a step further than was ever known before in history, civil or ecclesiastical.
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