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RE: Child marriage in the US
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.