Underage Marriage Is Not A Loophole

A.  Introduction

As I have surfed around the Internet, I have noticed that many of these fanatical femi-Nazis and societal fundamentalists in the fields of both journalism and politics have been referring to underage marriage as a LOOPHOLE against a statutory rape rap and the likes. I looked up the specific definition of the word “LOOPHOLE” on the Internet, and I found that it was literally defined as an ambiguity or inadequacy in the law or a set of rules. Well, believe me. Underage marriage is no LOOPHOLE against any criminal prosecution, so to speak. In some state jurisdictions, it may be a legitimate defense against a charge of statutory rape. However, that fact is only understandable inasmuch as the marriage exception has always been an essential ingredient to the age-of-consent laws across the United States of America just as I pointed out in my recent article titled “The Great American Controversy Over Underage Marriage” here on Steemit.  The fact that a young couple may be married in which both partners may happen to be on the opposite sides of the legal age line also might motivate a judge or even a jury to go lenient on a defendant accused of statutory rape or the likes or even let him off the hook. Despite what any fanatical femi-Nazis or societal fundamentalists like Fraidy Reiss, Jeanne Smoot, Virginia State Senator Jill Holtzman Vogel and Virginia State House Delegate Jennifer McClellan may say or believe, underage marriages based on love can and do exist and will continue to exist.

Underage marriage was certainly no loophole for Matthew Koso against any criminal charge after he married Crystal Guyer Koso back in 2005. Former Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning decided to rake both youngsters over the coals despite that they had gotten married. Mr. Bruning even unjustly charged Mr. Koso with one of the most reprehensible offenses that he could find on the law books.  Steve Wilkos compounded the young couple’s difficult situation by humiliating them and Crystal Guyer Koso’s mother, Cecilia Guyer, on his television talk show so many years after the controversial couple was interviewed on 20/20. After seeing a clip of that same television talk show on YouTube, my faith in Steve Wilkos as a talk show host was forever destroyed; and I will not watch his television talk show anymore. I have access to a recording of the one particular episode of 20/20 on which Matthew Koso and Crystal Guyer Koso were interviewed. If I can get the proper authorization to show it here on Steemit in accordance to copyright laws, I will do so. Many of you will feel empathetic toward this couple once you see this same television program.

Article after article after article regarding the topic of underage marriage continue to surface and pop up everywhere on the Internet. However, most of them all say the same nonsense and appear to be products of a group of narrow-minded sheep in the press and the media who have an inclination to side with rabble-rousing hotheads like Fraidy Reiss and Jeanne Smoot rather than with reason. Don’t these people have a life? In any event, as these little minds continue to pump out all their propaganda on this topic, I will continue to provide the actual facts on it to the public at large.

B.  Older Men Are Not Always The Cause Of Teenage Girls’ Problems

When I was 20 years old, my sister introduced me to a friend of hers. For the purposes of this article, I will refer to this friend of hers as Lorraine. Lorraine had an 11-year-old daughter named Amy, who was a very quiet girl and was always polite to everyone. From the time that Amy was 11 years old to the time that she was 13 years old, I had numerous occasions to see her and her mother whenever they were visiting my sister and I was over at my sister’s house. The last time that I had ever had occasion to see Amy and her mother for another five years was shortly before I moved to New York City. Four and a half years later, after I had moved from New York City to Los Angeles, California, I was speaking with my mother on the telephone and she brought up the subject of Amy. By then, Amy was 17 years old.

My mother told me that some 16-year-old punk had gotten Amy pregnant when she was just 15 years old. For the purposes of this article, I will refer to him as Conrad. Conrad was Amy’s regular boyfriend right up until Amy had to tell him that she was pregnant with his baby. That is, after Amy told Conrad that she was pregnant with his baby, he turned all hateful on her and made it clear to her that he wanted nothing to do with her or the baby. Amy became heartbroken, because she had been going out with this jerk for some time by then and she had believed that he actually loved her. Of course, then again, most teenage girls never think that their high-school boyfriend is going to do a Levi Johnston on them if they become pregnant. In other words, here this creep was in his relationship with Amy just for the sex and now that he was confronted with the prospect of fatherhood, he decided to bail on her like the typical deadbeat teenager father that he was. Amy eventually quit school temporarily and gave birth to a baby girl. She adopted the baby girl out inasmuch as she did not wish to be burdened with the offspring of a jerk who did not even love her and had apparently just used her for sex. When she returned back to high school to complete her education, other classmates knew about her having had a baby and they made fun of her. However, Conrad never seemed to suffer any ostracism from his classmates as a result of his being the one who had gotten her pregnant, even though he would have deserved all the difficulty that any of his peers could have given him.

I asked my mother how she had found out about all of these events involving Amy. My mother then told me that Conrad’s new girlfriend had given her all the details about Amy. For the purposes of this article, I will refer to Conrad’s new girlfriend as Evelyn. Amy had been working there at the same company where my mother was working, and my mother had not recognized her at first. After my mother had gotten into a random conversation with Evelyn and had commented that she thought that Amy was a nice girl, Evelyn then said that Amy was not that nice of a girl and told my mother every detail about Amy’s pregnancy as well as the events following it. I then said to my mother that if Evelyn was dating Conrad and knew what kind of person he was, she really wasn’t saying very much positive about herself by badmouthing Amy. After the way that she had gossiped to my mother about Amy, I would not have been able to blame Amy if she had walked up to her and slapped her across the face. I cannot understand what attracts girls and young women to deadbeat teenage fathers, when they should be well aware of the kind of damage that these creeps can do to them.

Nevertheless, the story regarding Amy does not end there. When Amy had returned to high school as a 16-year-old girl, she was suffering so much taunting and torment at the hands of her classmates that she apparently wanted nothing to do with any of the boys in her school. Shortly thereafter, she became romantically involved with a 24-year-old man. This man treated Amy with respect, and he gave her a listening ear to all her problems and to all of her suffering. For the purposes of this article, I will refer to him as Richard.

Amy’s mother, Lorraine, was divorced, and she became engaged to be married once again. She invited me, my mother, my sister, and my brother-in-law to her wedding. By the time that I attended Lorraine’s wedding, Amy was 17 years old. She sat across the table from me; and Richard, who by then was 25 years old, sat right next to her. Richard was always polite to me throughout that whole celebration. There was nothing bizarre or unusual about him. Everyone could see that he was an adult man in his mid-twenties dating a 17-year-old high-school girl. However, he was the knight in shining armor who came to Amy’s rescue in a time of desperation for her and provided her with the emotional support that she needed to get over her ordeal of becoming pregnant at 15 years old and having to give her baby up for adoption because the teenage father of her baby wanted nothing to do with her or her baby. Amy and Richard eventually got married. As far as I know, they are still together and happily married.

Okay. I get it. Amy was over 18 years old by the time that she married Richard. However, here is my point. American society always demonizes a 20-something-year-old man for becoming involved with an adolescent girl younger than 18 years old in any manner, unless, of course, he is 20 years old and the girl is 17 years old. Adolescent boys as young as 12 years old can be tried as adults in certain state jurisdiction, but no teenage boy ever seems to be held accountable for doing the kind of damage that Conrad did to Amy when she was a teenager. Fanatical femi-Nazis and societal fundamentalists want American society to turn a blind eye to the serious epidemic of deadbeat teenage fathers with which our nation is currently confronted. Meanwhile, these same rabble-rousers are digging up whatever dirt they can find, real or imagined, to demonize any man over 21 years old who has ever fallen in love with an adolescent girl and has married her regardless of whether or not he had waited until she was 18 years old. Given this overly paranoid environment in which we as Americans are living in this day and age, I’m beginning to wonder if it would even be safe for a musician to release a remake of a song like the one in the YouTube video below here in 2017.

Even Ringo Starr probably fears being called a serial baby rapist for having composed such a song as one is reminded that he was in his thirties back when he first released that same song. Benny Mardones might undergo similar such ridicule for his song in the YouTube video below in that he was well beyond high school after he released it.

Americans could not be more neurotic about the subject of teenage sex than ever now that fanatical femi-Nazis and societal fundamentalists are stirring up a panic regarding the marriage of minors. These idiots want everyone to believe that older men are causing all of teenage girls’ problems throughout our nation and throughout the world, whereas teenage boys can do no wrong to them so long as they are not legally old enough to vote.

If Richard had married Amy before her eighteenth birthday, I still would have gladly given them both my blessing. Richard showed himself to be a real man who cared about Amy and was there to see her through any crisis. Conrad, on the other hand, was just looking to get up her pants and to have something to talk about in the boys’ locker room. So much for same-age relationships between two consenting adolescents.

When I was in high school, I remember a series of articles in my local newspaper that described stories of adolescent girls who had become pregnant, some who were as young as 12 years old. One story that stands out in my mind was one about this one girl who had become pregnant when she was a preteen and had given birth to her baby at the age of thirteen. Her teenage boyfriend wanted nothing to do with her after she told him that she was pregnant with his child. However, a young man in his early twenties was not only willing to marry her to spare her the stigma of being an unwed teenage mother, but he also was more than willing to be a good father to a baby that wasn’t even his own. In hindsight, pubescent and adolescent girls are running into the arms of these older men to escape the abuse and humiliation that their adolescent baby daddies inflict upon them. Therefore, if Fraidy Reiss, Kathleen Sebelius, Jeanne Smoot, or anyone from their legion of fanatical femi-Nazis and societal fundamentalists were able to prove that their propaganda on this topic was true, wouldn’t it make more sense for them to push state legislatures and even Congress to pass laws that would punish these deadbeat teenage fathers for their transgressions against these young girls? If male juveniles can be prosecuted for forcible rape, why can’t the criminal justice system somehow punish them for getting a young girl between 12 and 17 years old pregnant and then bailing on her? Now, I’m not saying that we should go back to the old days before Romeo-and-Juliet clauses and provisions existed in many of the age-of-consent laws across this nation. However, I see no reason why these deadbeat teenage fathers couldn’t at least be removed from regular public schools and made to attend alternative schools where they would be away from decent girls who do not need to go through what Amy did. Private schools could even do their part by implementing policies that would mandate the expulsion of deadbeat teenage fathers as well as deadbeat teenage fathers-to-be from their learning institutions. 

C.  Fanatical Femi-Nazis’ Propaganda Regarding Underage Marriage Should Be Questioned

In my research of the topic of underage marriage, every so often I have come across a story about this so-called former child bride named Sherry Johnson. This woman claims that an older man had raped her when she was 9 years old and that she was forced to marry him at the age of eleven down in Florida. Lulu Garcia-Navarro of National Public Radio (N.P.R.) even did an interview with her over the radio airwaves not too long ago. In any event, this story of hers is all so full of holes.

Now, if this story about “Sherry Johnson” is true, then my heart goes out to her; and I will say that no 10- or 11-year-old girl should ever be put through the kind of horrors that she suffered. However, here is the thing. This “Sherry Johnson” is supposed to be a spokeswoman and motivational speaker for the movements to ban all underage marriage here in the United States of America; but I have looked everywhere on the Internet for a picture of her, and I have found none. I even looked at the article that New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote about her, and there was no photograph of her therein. This strikes me as somewhat odd, because, after all, she is supposed to be someone important to these same movements and she has never shown her face to the public at large as far as I know. Could she be a make-believe person? The New York Times as well as other outfits in the press and the media have been known to do much worse things than making up a fictitious person to promote a story of theirs.

In her interview with Ms. Garcia-Navarro, Ms. Johnson claimed that she became pregnant at the age of 9 back in 1969 as a result of a rape and gave birth to a baby girl in 1970 when she was just 10 years old. Then her parents forced her to marry her rapist in 1971 when she was only 11 years old. I have to ask this one pressing question. How could it have been legally possible for her to do so? These activists against underage marriage stress that Florida did not have any age floor for a minor to get married back then and has none now. However, as a former paralegal in various law firms, I know for a fact that the English Common Law governs in state jurisdictions that have no statutorily designated minimum marriageable age for minors. That is, in accordance with the English Common Law, the youngest that a girl can get legally married in the state of Florida is 12 years old. It’s 14 years old for boys. I mentioned in my previous article titled “The Great American Controversy Over Underage Marriage” about a girl in the southwestern part of the United States of America who got married at the age of 10 in the early 1980s.  However, it is possible that she and her husband might have gotten married down in Mexico, or perhaps their particular state jurisdiction had a statute on the law books that allowed for girls to get married as young as 10 years old. Statutory law always supersedes common law. Something just doesn’t sound right about Ms. Johnson’s sob story.

In her interview with Ms. Garcia-Navarro, Ms. Johnson stated:

   . . . I remember coming home from school after she was born, washing diapers out in a tub because at that time they didn’t have what you call Pampers nowadays.

SO NOT TRUE!!!!!!!!  Pampers first appeared on the market in 1961.  By 1971, Procter and Gamble were putting out Pampers that had the tape features, which replaced the pin-on designs. Therefore, there is something very peculiar about this story that this Ms. Johnson reported. I strongly urge everyone who takes an interest in this topic of underage marriage to be leery of anything you read or hear about it in the press or the media that may appear to be untrue. Even if this story were proven to be true, it is an isolated incident from decades ago and it does not represent the true face of voluntary teenage marriage.

D.  Conclusion

Underage marriage is not and has never been a loophole against the prosecution of sex crimes against adolescent minors. Our society needs to stop obsessing over banning Loretta-Lynn-style marriages and begin focusing on what we can do about the epidemic of deadbeat teenage fathers we have here in our nation. In the meantime, do not trust each and every tidbit of information or rather propaganda that fanatical femi-Nazis and societal fundamentalists spew to the public regarding underage marriage.

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