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Johnson, 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
by Mz 9y ago
Johnson, 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.