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Child Marriage in America
- lolc 9y agoEven Vatican City has raised the age of consent to 14 for women.
- moonforeshot 9y agowtf? U.S. isn't some 3rd world country...?
- EliRivers 9y agoIt seems so messed up that there are societies (in the US generally tiny little societies within much larger societies) in which your daughter being raped is a source of shame, but giving your daughter to that rapist makes it better. Have to wonder what these parents think on the wedding night. Do dad and mom go home after the wedding, sit with a beer and try not to think about the fact that their daughter is being raped that very second? I suppose if they were the kind of people who'd have trouble with that, they wouldn't have handed their daughter over. I suspect they go home and feel relieved that their social group approves of them again. A happy occasion for them.
- eternalban 9y agoThey probably don't think about it. It is a social mechanism that developed in their culture to get a man and a woman together in a social contract given an edge case. Just like we don't think about the fact that our (well my demo) mechanism typically involve (a) hitting on someone already in a relationship, (b) getting boozed up, (b) trivially entering and leaving relationships with little social cost. I think it reasonable to judge a mechanism's efficacy and continued relevance. However judging members of a cultural regime seems misguided and (per the modern dating/relationship scene) somewhat hypocritical. (Yes people are getting raped in both regimes. No, our regime doesn't reward the rapist. Yes, both regimes are trying to affect social stability and what you see also says a lot about how that culture got there ..)
- EliRivers 9y agoHowever judging members of a cultural regime seems misguided and (per the modern dating/relationship scene) somewhat hypocritical. I think I disagree with this. Starting with the axiom "raping children is bad" (which, granted, is an axiom and not a universal truth like a law of physics), I believe it is not somewhat hypocritical to judge people who endorse this, even if I come from a dating/relationship scene in which casual consensual sex happens. That said, I know that I do have a belief that one of the few true "sins" is the removal of personal agency from someone, and handing one's child over to her rapist is very much that; I wouldn't be surprised if I considered that action to be bad to a greater degree than others would. Still, at least I'm aware of my own prejudices in this.
- eternalban 9y agoYou should read my remark in the sense of 'social regimes are damned difficult to resist' and it appears humans have coping psychological mechanisms for individual members to deal with these sort of collective/individual dynamics, so focusing a judgmental gaze on individuals is misguided. We should look at the larger social construct, its evolution (how it got there), and finding possible cultural pathways to guide them out of their moral culdesac. [with p.s. to add regarding the "guiding" part: assuming our own moral condition is in fact in a healthy condition.]
- Svekax 9y agoRape, imprisonment, threats, assault, etc. are already illegal. I fail to see how adding an additional law will suddenly fix these situations. But raising the marriage age above the age of consent (like what was attempted in New Jersey) will cause real harm to people who have nothing to do with those situations. Teenagers won't be able to cover their pregnant partners under their insurance. Soldiers won't be able to get married before joining. More children will be born out of wedlock. What do democrats shout at Trump's plans to end Obamacare? "If you do this, people will die!" The minimum marriage age should be the age of consent and not a year higher.
- carc1n0gen 9y agoDoes it really matter if a child is born out of wedlock?
- Svekax 9y agoYes. Children with only one parent are more likely to be physically and mentally unhealthy, go to prison, not go to college, use drugs, abuse alcohol, etc. It should be obvious that children are better off when there are two people responsible for taking care of them.
- eatbitseveryday 9y agoBeing born out of wedlock does not mean there there is only one parent...
- ajdlinux 9y agoHmm - I assume NH's different ages for girls and boys wouldn't stand up against a 14th Amendment challenge...
- dennisgorelik 9y ago1) What the author of that article calls "rape" is probably a "statutory rape" which is a very different thing than actual violent rape that most readers visualize. 2) "it did interrupt Johnson’s attendance at elementary school" That is baloney. Why would marriage interrupt school attendance? Sherry just used her pregnancy and marriage as an excuse not go to school. That was her choice and had nothing to do with her legal status. 3) "two-thirds of marriages of underage girls don’t last" So what? Half of marriages do not last. Does it mean we have to ban all the marriages now? Or, may be, we should ban employment, because employment does not last too? How about one third of underage marriages that actually do last? Why should we ban them?
- Mz 9y agoIf you read the full article, this was probably actually rape, compounded by it being child rape. But I do agree that changing marriage laws doesn't really fix the situation described. The grown men raping little girls should be prosecuted for it instead of getting the girl handed over to them by the parents. Changing the marriage laws won't solve something so deeply sick and twisted. The situation described is a case of serious local corruption. They issued marriage licenses to put an end to rape investigations. Totally messed up stuff, not easily fixed.
- Mz 9y agoJohnson, the former 11-year-old unwitting bride who is now fighting for Florida to set a minimum marriage age (there is none now), says that her family attended a conservative Pentecostal church and that other girls of a similar age periodically also married. Often, she says, this was to hide rapes by church elders. It sounds to me like she is going after the wrong thing. The problem is not the marriage. This is like, I don't know, outlawing religion because some priests are pedophiles. Go after them for the actual crime they committed. Don't mess with marriage laws just because they get misused.
- thepaulstella 9y agoNo, it's nothing like "outlawing religion because some priests are pedophiles". It's more like sending the priest to another parish to obscure the fact that they've sexually assaulted children. It's just covering up the actual atrocity by having children marry their assaulter. You really think an 11-year-old being forced into marriage is not part of the problem?
- Mz 9y agoYou are twisting my words. Underage marriage is not always a case of an 11 year old being forced to marry her adult male rapist. What he did is already a crime. A group of people so willing to cover it up will just find new and creative ways to cover it up and excuse it. He has already broken a raft load of laws. He doesn't care and neither do the people forcing an 11 year o!d to marry him as some bs excuse to sweep it under the rug. One additional law saying that what he did is not okay won't fix this. But outlawing all underage marriage potentially interferes with two 17 year olds getting married who actually love each other and, whoops! she is pregnant.