Please God Do Not Make Me Take Pre-Wedding Marriage Ed

An advocacy group is trying to scrounge up the signatures to get legally mandated pre-wedding marriage education on the ballot in Colorado. And you thought taking an afternoon off to get a marriage license was a pain in the ass.

That’s according to the Denver Post, which reports that first-timers would be stuck with 10 hours; requirements are bumped up to 20 and 30 hours respectively if it’s your second or third time around. Civil unions and widows would be exempt.

It’s the work of a California-based group called “Kids Against Divorce,” and they’ll need 86,105 signatures by August to get on the ballot. The idea is to “better prepare individuals going into marriage to fulfill their new roles as spouse and potentially as parent, to furthermore protect children given that marriage is the foundation of a family unit.” That’s a hell of an assumption to peg a legal mandate on.

Look, pre-marriage counseling is one thing. Do you! But anyone who seriously believes that rounding up a bunch of adults for the marital equivalent of legally mandated drivers ed will make a lick of difference to the divorce rate is deluded.

The proposal says that the “Colorado State Board of Marriage and Family Therapist Examiners” would draw up the curriculum. But what would you even begin to put in the workbooks? Mandating everyone stop at red lights is a pretty good way of cutting down on car accidents, there’s no rules of the road guaranteed to work for every relationship.

And who’s going to teach these classes? What’s to guarantee quality control there? Can you imagine being required to fork over your own money to get lectured by some dick who doesn’t even believe in gay marriage, for instance?

All this proposal would do is create a massive inconvenience for engaged couples. Screw that.