Does Your State Allow Child Marriage?

The world gets stranger every single day, or it may be that my awareness of the craziness increases. I was amazed this evening to read an article about child marriage written by Suzanne Bowdey and published in The Daily Signal.

If you think child brides are the stuff of faraway cultures, think again. In 2017, child marriage was legal in all 50 states in America.

Only recently have survivors started chipping away at the practice, using their nightmarish stories to put a stop to the abuse of (mostly) young girls. California was next in line to outlaw the horror, until a shocking number of national groups swooped in to keep the under-18 unions legal.

Who are they and how can they justify their crusade? Answer: social extremists with one goal – protecting teenage abortion and transgenderism.

Bowdey told the story of a woman named Carol, who was only twelve years old when she became “engaged” to a man who was eighteen years old. He raped her “two and three times a week” for two years before he suspected that she was pregnant and took her to a doctor. The day after the pregnancy was confirmed, they were married to keep him out of jail. “Her new husband ordered her to quit school, sparking a five-year cycle of sexual abuse where she lived in a maggot-infested house with two babies and no electricity.”

Four decades, three husbands, and six children later, Carol is still traumatized [but married] to a good man for more than 30 years….

Horror stories like Carol’s are astonishingly common. More than 300,000 children under age 18 were legally married in the U.S. between 2000 and 2018. Delaware and New Jersey were the first to take on the crisis – a crisis most Americans had no idea existed.

After nine states did away with marriages for minors, pressure started ramping up in other states to end the predatory practice this year, including blue states such as California.

To everyone’s shock, the Left’s big guns started coming out of the woodwork, vehemently opposing the bills to end child marriage, which is considered a human rights violation even by the liberal United Nations….

While survivors in wedding dresses and chains marched through Sacramento to protest current law, groups such as Planned Parenthood, Children’s Law Center, and the ACLU are fighting to keep young girls shackled. According to Newsweek, the groups are worried that putting an age limit on marriage would somehow spill over to ban abortions or gender transitions.

Jonathan Keller, president of California Family Council, says he wishes it were a joke. It isn’t. On “Washington Watch” on Friday, he called it absolutely “tragic” to see how extreme the Left has become. The idea that Planned Parenthood and other such groups would lobby to keep girls locked in legal relationships with (in many cases) sadistic abusers, should be a bridge too far even for them.

But then, that’s the business model: early sex, more abortions. Whether or not it’s consensual matters little to the industry’s profit sharks.

Child Marriages

            Missouri has long been known for being the easiest place in the United States for children as young as 15-years-old to wed. Missouri Governor Mike Parson recently signed Senate Bill 655 into law and ended the practice.

            Prior to the signing of the bill, Missouri was one of twenty-five states that had no minimum age for marriage. It was also the only state that allowed 15-year-old children to marry with signed approval of a single parent. Children that were not yet 15 needed to have the approval of a judge.

            In his article about the marriage situation in Missouri, Eric Adler writes about the reason why the new law was needed. Because the state was known to be lenient in its marriage laws, 

Missouri had become a destination wedding spot for 15-year-old bridges, with 1,000 15-year-olds being wed in the state between 1999 and 2017. Many of them were marrying men age 21 or older, in effect allowing the girls to marry their rapists.

Now, no one age 15 or under is allowed to marry in the state. The minimum legal age is 16. Marriage at 16 and 17 still requires the signed approval of at least one parent. In addition, marriage licenses will not be given to individuals 21 or older intending to marry someone 16 or younger.

            The law is meant to protect children from adults that prey on them. “Someone 21 is not going to be allowed to marry someone 15. We are not going to allow adults to legalize what is statutory rape” say Rep. Jean Evans. The bill also “removes the statutes of limitation on prosecutions involving child abuse and unlawful sexual offenses against children.”

            With the signing of this bill, Missouri joins a growing list of states that are “adopting stricter child marriage laws.” Other states that have toughened their laws are Delaware, New Jersey, Virginia, Texas, and New York. Their laws differ a little but generally prohibit anyone under age 18 to marry unless legally emancipated.

            I am grateful that lawmakers in the nation are beginning to see the problem with child marriages. I see the problem as being more than simply protecting children from predators. I see it as a need to recognize that marriage is a serious commitment, one that children are not prepared to make and keep. Children of all ages – even pregnant ones – should have the opportunity to enjoy their childhood without taking on the obligations meant for adults.