"Stupid but legal": child marriage in the United States
Child marriage is not something that only happens far away. This video from ScIQ, a partner of The Young Turks network, shows that it is still legal in many parts of the United States.
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Legal in many states
When people hear "child marriage", the makers say, many think of some Muslim-majority countries. But child marriage happens in the USA too, and not only in one or two unusual states. Many people do not realise that an 11-year-old can be married there.
The video shows a world map of the minimum legal age of marriage for girls. The countries marked in orange allow children to marry. Besides the United States, the only other countries in orange are Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
Idaho votes against a ban
In the month the video was made, the Idaho House of Representatives voted down a bipartisan bill to end child marriage.
According to a national report, almost a quarter of a million children in the US were married between 2001 and 2010. The same report found that Idaho, the state that had just voted against the ban, had the highest rate of child marriage.
Idaho's law allows anyone, however young, to marry if both a parent and a judge agree. In theory, there is no lower age limit at all.
Girls married to adult men
Most child marriages are not "Romeo and Juliet" stories of 17-year-olds marrying their high school sweethearts. Only about 1 in 7 child marriages are between two minors.
In 77% of cases, the children married were underage girls marrying adult men, often with a large age gap. Some of these marriages simply legalised what would otherwise have been statutory rape.
In Alabama, for example, a judge once forced a 14-year-old girl to marry a 74-year-old man, even though the age of consent there is 16. The makers call it forced because, in their view, a child cannot truly choose such a marriage.
An outdated rule
The makers trace the problem to an outdated precedent. In the past, pregnancy outside marriage was a grave scandal. Many states set no minimum age of marriage as a way of "protecting" girls from having a child out of wedlock.
Today, a judge in Idaho can approve the marriage of a girl of any age if the judge "determines that it is in the best interest of society that the marriage be permitted". The makers argue that this usually means a pregnant girl standing before a judge who disapproves of births outside marriage.
"An overreach of the government"
Republicans in Idaho blocked the bill, saying that a ban on child marriage was "an overreach of the government".
"I do not think courts should be involved in marriage at all… I think two willing people should be able to go and get married," said Republican lawmaker Bryan Zollinger. The makers question how a ban on child marriage can be called government overreach.
The video was produced by Jayde Lovell and Bec Susan Gill and edited by Kevin Cunningham.
Sources
- Leave us kids alone: a look at child marriage in the US and beyond (Irish Examiner)
- Unchained At Last
- Hundreds of thousands of children married in the US (The Independent)
- Idaho lawmakers strike down bill to end child marriage in the state (WTSP)
- Idaho Statesman
- Tampa girl married her rapist at 11 years old (WTSP)
- Married in middle school: a Florida child bride (WTSP)
- Tahirih Justice Center: child marriage report (PDF)
Related
Play video: "Stupid but legal": child marriage in the United StatesThe video loads from YouTube when you play it.
Why Idaho lawmakers killed a child marriage bill (Patheos)
Embedded content: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2019/03/idaho-lawmakers-kill-bill-banning-child-marriage.html/embed#?secret=wnK5iu56mN