Amid concerns about the rights of parents
Child marriage in Somalia Pakistan Yemen Kentucky.
A bill to make 18 the legal age for marriage in Kentucky has stalled in a Senate committee amid concerns about the rights of parents to allow children to wed at a younger age, according to several lawmakers.
Known as the “child bride” bill, Senate Bill 48 was pulled off the agenda just hours before a scheduled vote by the Senate Judiciary Committee for the second time in two weeks.
What about the rights of parents to spank children with spiked clubs? What about the rights of parents to lock their children out of the house on freezing nights? What about the rights of parents to hold their children’s hands in a flame to teach them about fire?
Parents don’t have “rights” to abuse their children. Children have rights not to be abused by their parents.
The bill’s supporters have said underage marriages most often involve a teenage girl marrying an older man and may have involved sexual exploitation of the girl.
An older man “marrying” a high school age (or younger) girl is itself sexual exploitation of the girl. He doesn’t do it because she’s a whiz at doing laundry.
Donna Pollard, a Louisville woman who said she was married at 16 to an older man who began sexually abusing her when she was 14, has advocated for the bill. She told Courier Journal that opponents include the Kentucky Family Foundation, a Lexington-based conservative group that lobbies lawmakers on social issues. Family Foundation Executive Director Kent Ostrander did not respond to requests for comment.
Ah those reactionary groups that name themselves after the word “family,” by which they actually mean male ownership and dominance over girls and women.
Pollard testified in support of the bill along with a representative of the Arlington, Virginia-based Tahirih Justice Center, a women’s advocacy organization seeking to end child marriages in the United States.
Pollard said the man she now calls her “perpetrator” became violent and abusive after they married in 2000, a wedding she said was encouraged by her mother, who married at 13.
“I felt just completely and totally trapped,” said Pollard, now divorced.
Not all of them are lucky enough to get divorced.
I read somewhere that under the current law there is no minimum age for girls to be wed, but if she’s under 16 marriage is allowed only if she’s pregnant.
Don’t child sex-abuse laws exist in Kentucky?
This is so much part of the cult of virginity. Men want women who is a virgin, so if they marry them so young, they stand a better chance.
Why is virginity so prized? It is really a worthless commodity. And yes, I know all the evo psych explanations, but still…in the modern world, those explanations no longer hold water. It’s just hatred of women all over again.
@iknclast
I suspect part of it is male insecurity – no way to compare the performance to others.
If Roy Moore had only run in Kentucky, he might be in the Senate right now…
@iknclast
I don’t know about these particular evo psych explanations, but it’s the nature of evo psych effects to operate below the conscious level of the mind. It takes a determined effort to recognise them and act against them.
David Evans, the particular explanations I am talking about have to do with the need to know that your child is your own so you don’t support other men’s children.
I don’t actually find that too believable, anyway, since the evidence suggests that the family unit didn’t exactly jibe too well with the Ward and June nuclear family, and there is evidence that some tribes, at least, shared child care and food. In that situation, the determination that you not waste resources on other men’s children seems to be a bit unnecessary. Not to mention, this is mostly just another just-so story at this point.
Some men just want to be the first to show a young woman what disappointment is, I suppose.