Gack. Another gag me news item of note appears. This is the kind of deeply weird and even embarrassing story I really wish didn’t need amplification, but – here we are. A handful of Republicans in Missouri, the Show Me state, are showing themselves, saying the quiet part (almost) out-loud in regard to child marriage laws in the state, blocking a very common sensical update to their current law regarding the marriage of minors in Missoooo’. The law as it stands allows child marriage with parental consent as young as age sixteen; the Senate in the state has updated the statute to ban marriage before the age of eighteen, which is also the age at which you can file for a divorce. I add that because if you are sixteen and are parentally forced to marry, say, a thirty-year-old who raped and impregnated you, you can’t file for divorce in the state because you’re too young. The sound you hear is my head banging against my dining table. JHFC.
But, let’s not do that, okay, let’s not update that law – say a handful of Republicans in the Missouri House – because ‘parental rights’, as in children are the property of their parents, and if the parents want to marry off their sixteen-year-old daughter against her will, well, dammit, that’s their right!! Do I need to say (yes, I do) that the sixteen-year-olds being married off in Missouri are girls? Because of course it’s the girls. No one wants to see their young son/man of sixteen or seventeen married at such a young age, FFS!! That might derail his entire life, as it does for these unfortunate girls, who are more likely to live in poverty, largely because these children – teenagers are children, period, full-stop – are highly likely to drop out of high school and have many fewer choices and opportunities as a result.
Rep. Dean Van Schoiack, one of the bill’s opponents and therefore a pro-child marriage creepazoa, called the proposed update a government intrusion in people’s lives, and when asked what would be lost if 16 and 17-year-old kids couldn’t get marriage permits anymore, permits that are only able to be accessed with parental consent, Van Schoiack replied, “Liberties that people currently have.” Ooooook. His photo is both featured and posted below – isn’t he the very picture of wise, and kind, grandfatherly energy? Gack!
Child marriage is bad, for the kids involved, for the kids unfortunate to be a product of those forced marriages, for our society as a whole, and especially for girls, who are no ones property, other than their own.
P.S. – the whole ‘Dems/drag queens/teachers/librarians are grooming our kids thing – um, no – it’s guys like this POS who are the groomers, or enable it. Guys like this. The Missouri legislature is running out of time to fix this issue, and vote the updated law out of committee, let’s hope they do so, and right soon. Show us, y’all!
