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RE: Child marriage in the US
Let me ask you this. Wouldn’t it be better to change those laws or add exceptions into them? Kids don’t need to become adults before they need to. Granted, some will and some are forced into it.
Sorry for the delay in responding. I’m in the middle of a move.
I’ll check your article out. I’m assuming you’ve posted it.
Now that you mention it, Jewels3, that’s actually what Argentina and the Netherlands did. Argentina is a nation that favors establishing a solid minimum marriageable age of 18 years old with no exceptions all over the world. However, they have placed safeguards in their juvenile-justice-related laws to protect their nation from encountering the same problems that the United States of America does in the way I described in my previous reply. The Netherlands had an age of consent of 21 years old up until the year 1990. At the same time, if I am not mistaken, the only way that a minor under 21 years of age could get married in that nation was to get permission from the Dutch monarchy, which seldom ever happened. Kind of like you or me trying to get an appointment to have tea with Queen Elizabeth at the Buckingham Palace. Not so easy to do, to say the least. By the 1980s, as a result of these laws in the Netherlands, their society had become anarchical in that there was such a severe disconnect between them and the criminal justice system that the criminal laws they did have on their books regarding juvenile-justice-related issues pertaining to sexual conduct were nearly unenforceable. Then they reformed many of these laws by giving adolescents more say in how they got enforced in their nation, but 21 years old continued to be the minimum marriageable age in that country. That is, unless it has changed recently. What I’m thinking is that probably the same thing is going to happen in Florida eventually, if their state does decide to pass this child marriage bill and establishes 18 years old as the minimum marriageable age with no exceptions. However, I don’t think that it will happen overnight, because many people in the criminal justice system and the likes want to have their cake and eat it too and I don't see Texas or Virginia doing anything along those lines despite that they have toughened their laws against underage marriage recently. Law-enforcement officials and prosecutors talk about wanting to protect adolescents from becoming victims of corruption and exploitation. However, when I continue to hear about high school girls being charged with contempt of court and being arrested and sent to Juvenile Hall for refusing to testify against their older boyfriends in carnal knowledge cases that they view to be witch hunts, I find myself feeling very skeptical about anything that these law-enforcement officials and prosecutors say. If they view these young girls as victims, I don’t see how it makes any sense that they treat them like criminals in those situations. It seems as though these law-enforcement officials and prosecutors make these carnal knowledge cases involving teenage minors out to be more about themselves than about anyone else. I honestly don’t believe that they truly care about these teenage girls, their families or anyone else involved in those kinds of cases. I’ve come across some extremely relentless individuals in our legal system through the years that I begin to question whether some of these people even have a soul inside of them. Not to say that there are a few good apples here and there in our legal system. They’re just getting more and more difficult to find. I have not posted my article about the marriage bill in Florida yet. I’ll probably be doing so near the end of this month or the beginning of next month. If you want, I’ll let you know when I publish it. Thank you for replying back to me. :)
I don’t see any way to make everyone happy and protect everyone. That’s why this is such a complex issue. There will be strong opinions on both sides.
My prediction is there will be small changes over decades until people get use to an older marriage age. But then you’ll still see changes along the way.
About your comment about officials not caring. I once thought that. I worked with the Attorney Generals chief investigator quite a bit last year and got to see that more do care than we realize. That was important for me to be able to see.
Oh, I've known some really decent officials in my lifetime. In fact, I make it a point to vote for those same officials whom I know are going to do a good job, whenever they run for office and I know how they're going to handle issues that the public presents to them once elected. However, as each year goes by, I come across more and more stories about elected officials being involved in hypocrisy and corruption than before. I’m not particularly a fan of Florida House Representative Daisy Baez’s quest to pass her marriage bill in Florida. However, I have seen her speak in YouTube videos, and one thing that I do agree with her on is that people need to get out and vote more often than they do. Otherwise, we are allowing others to decide for us who gets into office. People think that the only important election is the presidential election every four years. However, it is local and state officials who have the power to decide what quality of life we are going to have in our respective state jurisdictions and what laws will affect our lives.
I have watched many YouTube videos and have read many articles regarding the movement to ban all underage marriage in America. What I find so interesting about them is that these activists behind this same movement talk about the cracks that exist in the American legal system as what they believe to be a result of allowing minors to marry before 18 years of age. For example, they talk about how a minor cannot get a divorce to be free from an unwanted marriage unless their spouse signs the paperwork for them provided that their spouse is over 18 years of age. I completely get how wrong that is. At the same time, I find it so bizarre, because I remember watching Judge Wapner on “The People’s Court” so many years ago and hearing him tell the court that a minor can legally break out of a binding contract easily with no questions asked. It would seem that there would be a way to get the marriage laws pertaining to minors to mirror the laws regarding contracts in that same respect. In other words, if a 17-year-old can break out of a binding contract really easily because he or she is not above the age of majority, it would only seem fair that a 17-year-old should also be able to break out of an unwanted marriage really easily inasmuch as a marriage is no different than a binding contract in essence. Opponents of “child marriage” bans across the nation talk about legislation in that respect to nip such problems in the bud rather than making it illegal for teenage minors to get married altogether. I know that that is only one of many issues that these activists in the movement against underage marriage have brought up in their presentations to the public. However, like Stephanie Nilva, I come from the school of thought that if someone’s liver has two or three cancerous tumors on it, it is better to remove the tumors themselves than to remove the entire liver. Removing the tumors addresses the cancer directly, whereas removing the entire liver opens a person up to a whole new myriad of health problems. The same logic would seem to apply to underage marriage. If our nation establishes a solid marriageable age of 18 years old with absolutely no exceptions for minors to wed under any circumstances, our state legislatures across the nation may be erasing most, if not all, of these problems that people like Fraidy Reiss and Jeanne Smoot speak of. However, they could also be opening up a can of worms that will bring even much bigger problems to our nation that may cause irreparable harm to everyone. What bewilders me is that none of the proponents of these marriage bills to outlaw underage matrimony throughout our country have researched into the possible repercussions that these laws could have once they are put into effect. Just because something may look good on its surface to many people in the short run doesn’t mean that it is going to be good for the public interest in the long run.