Missouri legislature votes to ban child marriage, raising age to 18
Missouri legislature votes to ban child marriage, raising age to 18
I don't get why a such law took so long, but late is better than never.
Rep. Hardy Billington, R-Poplar Bluff, was among the few who spoke against the bill, arguing that barring pregnant teenagers from getting married would increase abortion rates.
“We all claim to be pro-life here in the body,” Billington said. “Now we’re going to vote on this bill where babies are going to die.”
Disgusting. What a pitiful excuse to enable the trafficking of children. I'm ashamed to live here. There's no fucking guarantee that it would even increase abortion rate, this guy is a closeted pedophile looking out for his ilk.
Apparently he's been spouting this bullshit for at least the past year. Not to mention he's also a homophobe.
Sounds like an old guy from the 50s, who still clings to 50s social mores and stigmas, unaware that being a single mother isn't the massive taboo he remembers it being.
Checks Hardy Billington's Wikipedia page
Born 1952 or 1953 (age 71–72)
Aaaaaand there we have it. Not sure why his exact birthdate isn't known. In fact the only notable thing on that page is about him expressing opposition to another child marriage bill that was proposed last year. Imagine having "strongly endorses child marriage" as the one and only legacy from your 70+ years of life. Gross.
It's okay because there's an R next to his name. It wouldn't shock me if people were fully aware of his views. The abortion argument works for women here and the men here were sold at "child marriage."
That's a good take. The generational difference is real, that good old shotgun wedding from the past.
Most likely he has just never revealed his birthday to the public to Wikipedia is just guessing on the year.
"in a move that infuriates conservatives..."
The final version of the bill passed the House by a vote of 129-14, with one member voting present. In the Senate, it passed by a vote of 32-1. Sen. Mike Moon, R-Ash Grove, was the only vote against.
What sort of garbage person do you have to be to vote against something like this?
A Republican
Check the hard drives of those 14
What sort of garbage person do you have to be to vote against something like this?
A pederast who wants to have sex with your underage daughter.
The next time someone makes fun of shithole countries remind them that hundreds of 12yo are married in the US every year. And I guess their little bodies are ready for motherhood because many of them produce a baby in 4 or 6 mo after the wedding.
many of them produce a baby in 4 or 6 mo after the wedding
Wow, they are just precocious in every way, aren’t they?
The usual shit that islamophobes would say is that 'at least they aren't 9' even if many Islamic countries ban that shit and large age gaps in marriage (Egypt is one example) and many children marriages that do happen are between children. As in, an 11 year old girl is betrothed to a 14 year old boy (still not cool though). They also ignore that in many cases a man who does marry a little kid is often socially ostracized and treated like shit for doing that.
"Do you know any kids who have been married at age 12? I do. And guess what? They're still married," Moon said in response to questioning by Democratic state Representative Peter Merideth.
Child brides aren’t old enough to divorce their husbands.
That’s the point - the power imbalance. Marry off young girls to men who can groom and control them. Daddy-husbands and child-wives. The Christian complementarian model sees women as essentially children anyway. Like Moon’s comment implies - if they marry you off at 12, you are never getting the independence to escape.
The new Pope's from the US.
for anyone surprised at this, I learned from an Ask Lemmy thread that the age of sexual consent in well over half of the USA is 16 years old, in something like 30 states.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_consent_in_the_United_States
up until that point I figured it was 18 across the US.
I was real wrong.
As bad as that is, a kid doesn’t have to be anywhere near the age of consent for their parents to marry them off to an old man (let’s be real, that’s what’s happening).
And since they aren’t old enough to be the one consenting to the marriage, they can’t file for divorce and if they try to escape, they are treated as run aways and returned to their abuser (again, let’s be real, that’s what’s happening).
Statuary rape is legal if the poor child’s parents consent. And they can do it in 36 US states. Including California. Do better.
The vast majority of American movie and tv just use 18 regardless, to avoid any legal issues
Which is why a lot of Americans, even ones living in states where it's 16, think it is 18 in all states.
Not just the USA. Historically humans considered teens as young adults, granting them more rights and responsibility as they transition to adulthood, sometimes with parental consent.
It is a recent development that we look back thinking "no way should me or my friends have been able to marry or worse, arranged to be married at that age"
In many countries its 14. But that just means its legal for a 14 year old to fuck another 14 year old. Its still illegal for an adult to fuck a 14 year old.
So thats insufficient information usually, to just look at the lowest legal age of consent.
Bet Republicans are furious
"uplifting" news
c/orphancrushingmachine
What century is this again?
Oh it gets worse. This change is just the most recent in a series of states updating their laws since 2017. Because a study was released that showed almost 200,000 child marriages in the US between 2000 and 2015. And over the next three years years another ~100,000 happened.
And while it's important to remember that a 17 year old marrying an 18 year old is technically child marriage, and 16-17 year olds girls who marying men who were over 18 or older but less than 29 is over 90% of those statistics. There were dozens between girls who were 12-14 and men who were 40+, some were 60+. And that it is still legal in several states if certain criteria are met.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_marriage_in_the_United_States
The USA is a Christian fundamentalist oligarchic theocratic surveillance police state.
This was allowed before?!
Watch the Republicans set their hair on fire in response while introducing legislation to allow more child workers as well.
The party of family values.
Most US states allow it with parental consent.
In theory it's a holdover from times when age based consent was crazy liberal ideology, which for most of the red states means like 1990.
Wow, MISSOURI did that???
MISSOURI??!??
I'm thinking the tipping point has been reached, the pendulum is now moving away from conservatism, and we'll see little upsets like this as rural states begin to shift back. Missouri is facing a hell of a medicaid cut which they can't afford, that may ripple for a while.
Unfortunately they have short memory spans but eventually they'll flip for a generation, like the New Deal era. People will just give up on MAGA and go the other way.
No they wont. They'll continue to blame others and refuse to accept responsibility. There will be no pendulum swing because they will keep reinforcing themselves through radical fascist media expansion.
I'll be deep in the cold, cold ground before I recognize Missouri.
Well, glad I married off my daughter at 14 last year. Knew that was a good decision
My other wives are very happy with their new sister-wife, thank you for your spawn. The dowry is in the mail.
Shipping costs on 4.5 bags of funyuns probably wasn't that bad.
Finally. The bare fucking minimum.
It's Missouri, it's a miracle this happened.
You mean they hadn't already?!
It's legal in a lot of the US, yes. Sometimes it requires approval from a judge, 4 states have no minimum age at all.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_marriage_in_the_United_States
Republican men are probably throwing a fit that they won’t be able to legally groom and rape children for “family values” anymore
This is PROOF that America is On the DECLINE! We NEED MORE God in School's to REVERSE this COMMUNIST FILTH of OUTLAWING MARRYING CHILDREN! First THIS then what? We CANT have SEX with them?
-School Shooting Advocates AKA Conservatives!
The year is 2025.......
And America is still this ass backwards.
Least some good news for once.
Abolish Marriage.
We don’t need the state or religious authorities dictating our relationships.
Amen, brother.
Need to do something for stuff like inheritance and visitation rights that's currently coupled (pun intended) to marriage.
That's the role of the de facto union. But the civil union usually grants you special conditions, along with your spouse.
Trump will probably put in an EO banning age restrictions on marriage and the right will cheer.
I mean... this is reason to celebrate, but at the same time it's like saying you're giving up on blinding orphan puppies. You were doing what?
Checked if this was an Onion type article. So glad it isn't.
Old men in Missouri just want to trade their gently (ab)used old wives in for a new model.
What’s the big deal ? Women are property right? Just there to have babies and make sandwiches, right?
Fuck Nazis. Fuck Christianity. Some creepy bible rapist comes for my kids they better be absolutely ready to “meet Jesus”
It's wild to me how much debate there was over this here in our General Assembly, but I'm glad it came out correctly.
Now if only they'd stop trying to gut the other things we voted for last year: $15 minimum wages, required paid sick leave, and abortion rights.
This is a new article from 1800, right? right?
In California, for instance, the general marriage age is 18, but children may be married with parental consent and judicial approval with no minimum age limit.[53
The fact that so many states allow marriage at 16 is concerning. 🫤
Two questions:
It was 16 but only with parental consent and only with a marriage partner 21 or younger.
16 with parental consent is quite common. Mississippi I think is 15. Some allow marriage younger than this (some have effectively no minimum age), but with the requirement for consent to also be sought through the courts.
In many it used to be something like with parental permission. Basically child trafficking enshrined in law.
Human trafficking was the foundation of our great nation. Hell, there's still a lively Mail Order Bride market out of the States.
We can't stop. We won't stop.
I'll be curious to see if this law survives contact with the courts. Perhaps we'll even see destination weddings happening on the other side of the Arkansas border.
Still allowed in a lot of US states
aw...
<sad banjo music>
uhhhh why wasnt this done in the 1800s???
Missouri wanted slavery in the 1800s at its conception.
Missouri of all places!
What? Was that not the norm?
It's the bible belt. Those people don't think with their brains. Actually, they sometimes don't think at all. Welcome to America! Where we tore down a beautiful land, full of lush trees, running rivers, breathtaking mountains, and sprawling deserts, in exchange for strip malls, churches, dry ravines, mountains of garbage (both figuratively and literally), and casinos.
You're seeking morality from a nation who twice elected an open racist. Your expectations of this country are too high. We are trash. And I won't change my opinion until society does better.
https://calmatters.org/politics/2023/06/child-marriage-california/
Just gotta say, fuck the ACLU for both getting hate speech declared free speech and opposing a man on child marriage.
Where is the loop hole? Emancipation?
meanwhile in Florida...
Trump will absolutely flip over this. Hell, the entire Republican party will go on strike.
Inb4 reference frame based age adjustments become the next red ticket item.
Oh no, won't someone thing of the children.
/s
They mean 21 right?
I would rather you guys lower the drinking age to 18...
It should be 25. That's the age when your brain is fully mature.
Hey I waited to my 30's when I had my shit together. Its no use getting married only to pull each other down during the painful growth period of one's life.
Oh USA the land of liberty lol...
What? No wonder the Missouri Oblast is fucked up.
TL;DR, a region of America became saner.
Now raise it to 21.
my sister is RUSHING to get married before Republicans revoke same sex marriage
I got married the month Clarence Thomas threatened it
Why 21? Isn't 18 the age for everything (except alcohol for some reason)?
No, raise it to 25. That's the age when the decision-making centers of the brain are fully grown out.
Um, that's great and everything, but it's still too young. Your brain doesn't finish developing until you're 25, and the brain is the part of the body you're concerned about when you're making laws about when somebody should be able to make a big decision like getting married.
Technically you're right, but there's a whole load of things where you might be concerned about brain development. Enlisting, alcohol and tobacco consumption and taking out any sort of credit including student loans, comes to mind. I think actually you'll agree with me that those should all be restricted to 25+.
Now where things get less clear is voting. Why should people under 25 be allowed to vote if we don't consider them adult enough to make their own decisions in a lot of other cases? You could easily make the case that someone who can't yet decide their own future, should not be able to decide on the future of the nation.
The impact of this would be that the group of voters that has the most reason to care about the future, might lose their voice entirely. Maybe it's not a particularly active group, but they should be heard like anyone else.
This is one reason I don't think it's a great idea to start raising age minimums for things far above 18 based on the brain development argument.
I got married at 21, to a woman who was 30. Worst mistake of my life.
Robyn DeCradle
Not to mention that marriage is a phase, they shouldn't really be letting people get married. Do you even know what those wedding cakes are made of? And what if someone bullies you?
This isn’t true. The study you are referring to was simply funded to that point in time and there has not been a repeat study or any sort of extended work on that front, that’s simply when the study stopped. The more likely explanation is that your brain never stops developing. Also, the concept of child and adult are constructs, at some point we are old enough to think and act on our own and there is no universal marker for that change in rationality and behavior or any bar for where that divide line is drawn. The idea that people shouldn’t be allowed to practice autonomy until 25 is just coddling and absurd.
Which study are you talking about? This is the mainstream view of neuroscientists.
Here's what I got from MentalHealthDaily (sources at the bottom of the article):
Neuroscientists largely agree that the human brain hasn’t fully developed until (at least) the mid-20s.
It may seem logical that those aged 18 to 25 are completely mature, the brain still is maturing – specifically the area known as the “prefrontal cortex.” Changes occurring between ages 18 and 25 are essentially a continued process of brain development that started during puberty. When you’re 18, you’re roughly halfway through the entire stage of development. The prefrontal cortex doesn’t have nearly the functional capacity at age 18 as it does at 25.
This means that some people may have major struggles with impulsive decisions and planning behavior to reach a goal. The brain’s reward system tends to reach a high level of activation during puberty, then gradually drifts back to normal activation when a person reaches roughly the age of 25. Adults over the age of 25 tend to feel less sensitive to the influence of peer pressure and have a much easier time handling it.
Baby steps, It's Missouri.
Anecdotally I am tending to agree but I have no scientific background. I feel like laws like this can be studied and then back by verification
This is really mean so I'm reporting it please talk to an adult about this, it's not a good way to view other people
You guys should totally isolate on this continent of yours and don’t leave it at all.
Unfortunately, America doesn't work as a project without endless territorial expansion. So we're happy to close our borders, but we're never going to stop demanding your tribute on pain of getting hit with our bombs.
And if it fails, you know whoever voted for it to not pass is a child predator. Hopefully there's a list of people who voted "no" on it that gets leaked so people, especially parents, know who to cut contact with.
I mean, basically every Republican legislature or executive is a child predator. It's like a prerequisite to join the party. Their ratings don't drop when they're exposed.
There is no need for leaks, it's right in the article:
I get where you’re coming from but leaking a list of names and how they voted is a terrible thought.
Voting choices of individual citizens over political matters and selection of representatives? sure, 100% should always be anonymous to avoid discrimination and political violence.
But this are representatives on an assembly, making legislation. Their votes are, as they correctly should be, 100% always public. It's the way constituencies can keep representatives accountable for their actions.