Virginia introduces law to stop 12-year-old girls from getting married

The effort to update the laws involved Republicans and Democrats

Between 2004 and 2013, around 4,500 children under the age of 18 got married in the state of Virginia. Of these girls, more than 200 of them were aged 15 or under.

Last week, the authorities in the state introduced new legislation that updated rules that had until then made it legal for girls aged 12 or 13 to get married if they had parental consent and were pregnant.

The changes - a move that campaigners said brought Virginia’s laws into the 21st Century - followed a long fight by activists who said the change was aimed at curbing forced marriage, human trafficking and statutory rape disguised as marriage.

The Washington Post said that the legislation was the result of bills being passed by state politicians Republican Jill Holtzman Vogel and Democrat Jennifer McClellan. Similar bills were introduced in California, Maryland, New Jersey and New York this year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The law, which took effect last Friday, set the minimum marriage age at 18, or 16 if a child is emancipated by court order. It takes parents and pregnancy out of the equation, the Post reported.

The Tahirih Justice Centre, which is based in the city of Falls Church, was among those groups pushing for a change in the law. Activists there said the previous law created a “fast-track to child marriages” for abusers who could evade investigation by child-welfare officials by simply marrying their victims.

“We hope that legislators will see the efforts in Virginia as a wake-up call about how their laws can facilitate forced marriages of children,” Jeanne Smoot, ­Tahirih’s senior counsel for policy and strategy, told the newspaper.

Ms Vogel said she learned about the issue when constituents in an affluent part of her Northern Virginia district sought her help after a man in his 50s was suspected of having sex with a high school student.

As child-protective services began to close in, Ms Vogel said the man wooed the parents and married the girl, eliminating the possibility of prosecution. It was the second time he followed this tactic; the earlier marriage ended in divorce, she said.

“Now they’re married, and there’s no crime,” said Ms Vogel, a lawyer who is running for lieutenant governor. “She dropped out of high school. Her life is ruined.”

When children get married, Ms Smoot said, they are 50 percent less likely to finish high school, four times less likely to go to college and more likely to have children sooner and more closely spaced than people who marry as adults.
The World Policy Centre, an organisation that analyses government policies, says that 88 percent of countries around the world have a legal minimum age of 18 for marriage.

The group says that “women married before the age of 18 are three times more likely to have been beaten by their spouse than women married at age 21 or older.”

In the US, marriage laws vary by state. There are currently believed to be six states where girls can get married under the age of 16 with parental consent.

Earlier this year, YouTube celebrity Coby Persin organised an experiment in New York’s Times Square, where a 65-year-old man posed for photographs with a 12-year-old “bride”. The response from passers-by ranged from fury to incredulity.

He organised the stunt to highlight a situation in which 33,000 girls around the world are forced to marry every day.
He said: “New Yorker’s didn't stand for a child getting married to an older man, and neither should anywhere else in the world be ok with it.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/virginia-introduces-law-to-stop-12-year-old-girls-from-getting-married-a7119091.html





I remember when Jerry Lee Lewis married an underage girl, but I didn't think it was still happening!

My God...in a civilised country like America how is this allowed?

I remember the Jerry Lee Lewis scandal too...well it was a scandal here anyway.

I'm utterly gobsmacked!

Syl wrote:My God...in a civilised country like America how is this allowed?

It's the South. That region is in no way civilized.

Some Muslims are fond of condemning western morality – alcoholism, nudity, premarital sex and homosexuality often being cited as examples. But Muslims do not have a monopoly on morality. In the west, child marriages and sex with children are illegal. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for many Muslim countries.

I recently saw the documentary on the Dancing Boys of Afghanistan. It exposed an ancient custom called "bacha bazi" (boy for play), where rich men buy boys as young as 11 from impoverished families for sexual slavery. The boys are dressed in women's clothes and made to dance and sing at parties, before being carted away by the men for sex. Owning boys is considered a symbol of status and one former warlord boasted of having up to 3,000 boys over a 20-year period, even though he was married, with two sons. The involvement of the police and inaction of the government means this form of child prostitution is widespread.

The moral hypocrisy is outrageous in a country where homosexuality is not only strictly forbidden but savagely punished, even between two consenting adults. However, men who sodomise young boys are not considered homosexuals or paedophiles. The love of young boys is not a phenomenon restricted to Afghanistan; homosexual pederasty is common in neighbouring Pakistan, too. In my view, repression of sexuality and extreme gender apartheid is to blame.

And in the Middle East, it's young girls who are considered desirable and men are able to satisfy their lusts legally through child marriages. In Yemen, more than a quarter of girls are married before the age of 15. Cases of girls dying during childbirth are not unusual and recently, one 12-year-old child bride even died from internal bleeding following sexual intercourse. In another case, a 12-year-old girl was married to an 80-year-old man in Saudi Arabia.



https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/apr/25/middle-east-child-abuse-pederasty

Original Quill wrote:

Syl wrote:My God...in a civilised country like America how is this allowed?

It's the South.  That region is in no way civilized.

It's about time America took it in hand.

HoratioTarr wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

It's the South.  That region is in no way civilized.

It's about time America took it in hand.

You know...we are working on that. The south in the US is defined by racism. They are surrounded by a satellite of compatible issues...guns, the KKK, ignorance, anti-immigration, anti-women, etc.

Their political party is the Republican Party. That party is going through the throes of death as we speak. The old white men are dying off. Emerging in the south are people like Wendy Davis and Julian Castro, former San Antonio City Council member and Mayor, and current Secretary of HUD, not to mention his brother, Congressman Joaquin Castro.

I don't know what will appear as an opposition party to the Democratic Party, but it is clear that the Republican ship is sinking with Donald Trump.