Child marriage laws are in
the news. The Florida legislature just voted to increase the marriage age from
16 to 17. This is a compromise.
Advocates fighting child marriage wanted to raise the age to 18, but that was
too much for the legislature. After all, what if she’s pregnant?? Does forcing
a pregnant child into marriage wave some kind of magic improvement wand over
the situation?
Between the years of 2000 and 2015, there were 16,400 child marriages in Florida. There were 207,000 child marriages in 41 states during those years. (There isn’t data for every state.) A whopping 87% of those marriages were girls, and most of them were married to adult men – men over the age of 18. Try to imagine the reaction if the story were that 87% of teenaged boys were being married off to adult women. I feel certain that the deafening silence around girls would turn to howls if it were boys.
Between the years of 2000 and 2015, there were 16,400 child marriages in Florida. There were 207,000 child marriages in 41 states during those years. (There isn’t data for every state.) A whopping 87% of those marriages were girls, and most of them were married to adult men – men over the age of 18. Try to imagine the reaction if the story were that 87% of teenaged boys were being married off to adult women. I feel certain that the deafening silence around girls would turn to howls if it were boys.
In most states the age of consent is 16 or 17. Yet we don’t call it rape when a girl who is too young to legally consent to sexual relations is married off to her rapist. We look down on the “uncivilized” countries where child marriage is a regular occurrence, but we are one of those countries. The highest numbers are in Florida, Texas, Kentucky, and Virginia.
As much as we might want to believe that this only happens in the southern states, we know better. Last year we learned that in New Hampshire, girls can be married at 13 and boys at 14. Last year, a bill to change that, was defeated in the NH House. Some of our male legislators bemoaned the thought that a young man going off to fight for his country wouldn’t be able to marry his pregnant teen girlfriend – as if he were a WWII Doughboy heading off to fight with “You’re a Grand Old Flag” playing in the background. Defending child marriage is defending child rape, and adult men having sex with teenaged girls is something our society has turned a blind eye to for a very long time.
A girl who is pregnant and
married before she legally has any rights is a prime target for abuse. She is
likely to enter a cycle of poverty that she will never recover from. Thinking
that marrying this girl off washes away some kind of sin is ridiculous. The sin
is adult men having sex with underage girls. The sin is men fighting against
increasing the marriage age because they think it is their right to have sex
with girl children.
This year another bill to raise the marriage age is before the legislature. It’s being touted as a “compromise.” It raises the age for both boys and girls to 16. If the bill passes, at least when an underage girl marries an adult man, she will have gone through puberty.
The death penalty is also back in the news in NH. A bill to change the penalty for capital murder to life imprisonment has come out of the Senate with a large, bipartisan group of sponsors. The minute the bill was announced, Governor Sununu announced he would veto it. This announcement came before there was a single hearing, before any of the sponsors offered testimony, and probably before he read it. The Governor made a big point of saying that he stands with victims and law enforcement. Last year, when Sununu took office, his first priority was getting a bill passed to eliminate the concealed carry license for a handgun. The NH Chiefs of Police were strongly opposed to that, as were victim’s rights groups. He ignored them both, preferring to pander to gundamentalists and the NRA.
There isn’t anything new to say about the death penalty. It’s barbaric, and perpetuating it only serves to put us in the same category as other countries that have terrible records on human rights. It’s not a deterrent. No one in New Hampshire ever thinks, “Ooops, I’d better go kill my wife/girlfriend/boss/neighbor in: Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, or Maine because they don’t have the death penalty there.”
At a Senate hearing this week, it was clear that the largest objection to eliminating the death penalty is the fear that the state won’t get to kill Michael Briggs, our only prisoner on death row. An officer testified that the existence of the death penalty sends the message that we (the people) have their (the cops) back. If I were a cop, I think I’d prefer the people had my back while I was alive – in the form of good working conditions, training, pay, and health coverage.
This year another bill to raise the marriage age is before the legislature. It’s being touted as a “compromise.” It raises the age for both boys and girls to 16. If the bill passes, at least when an underage girl marries an adult man, she will have gone through puberty.
The death penalty is also back in the news in NH. A bill to change the penalty for capital murder to life imprisonment has come out of the Senate with a large, bipartisan group of sponsors. The minute the bill was announced, Governor Sununu announced he would veto it. This announcement came before there was a single hearing, before any of the sponsors offered testimony, and probably before he read it. The Governor made a big point of saying that he stands with victims and law enforcement. Last year, when Sununu took office, his first priority was getting a bill passed to eliminate the concealed carry license for a handgun. The NH Chiefs of Police were strongly opposed to that, as were victim’s rights groups. He ignored them both, preferring to pander to gundamentalists and the NRA.
There isn’t anything new to say about the death penalty. It’s barbaric, and perpetuating it only serves to put us in the same category as other countries that have terrible records on human rights. It’s not a deterrent. No one in New Hampshire ever thinks, “Ooops, I’d better go kill my wife/girlfriend/boss/neighbor in: Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, or Maine because they don’t have the death penalty there.”
At a Senate hearing this week, it was clear that the largest objection to eliminating the death penalty is the fear that the state won’t get to kill Michael Briggs, our only prisoner on death row. An officer testified that the existence of the death penalty sends the message that we (the people) have their (the cops) back. If I were a cop, I think I’d prefer the people had my back while I was alive – in the form of good working conditions, training, pay, and health coverage.
The bipartisan support behind
the bill could increase to a number sufficient to override the governor’s veto.
The state should not be in the killing business. It’s time for NH to move out
of the dark ages.
This was published as an op-ed in the March 16, 2018 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper
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