Regarding your question of applying the sanction of
suspension of voting rights to people who marry without the consent of parents,
this should be done from now on. The law of the Aqdas is explicit and not open
to any ambiguity at all. As long as the parents are alive, the consent must be
obtained; it is not conditioned on their relationship to their children. If the
whereabouts of the parents is not known legally, in other words, if they are legally
dead, then it is not necessary for the children to obtain their consent,
obviously. It is not a question of the child not knowing the present
whereabouts of its parents, it is a question of a legal thing—if the parents
are alive, they must be asked. - Shoghi Effendi (From a letter dated 10 June 1956 written on
behalf of Shoghi Effendi to an individual believer; ‘Messages to Canada’)
