I was kind of surprised to see that while I had my head down in working my real job this afternoon that the bill that would have helped stop legalized sex trafficking failed in the state senate this afternoon.
Did I say legalized sex trafficking? What am I referring to? Senate Bill 156, of course. The measure that proposed to increase the minimum age for marriage to 18 failed on the Senate floor on a vote of 16 for the bill, 19 against.
19 members of the State Senate are ok with this? Really?
Many of the same people who want to demand that every effort be made to ensure that people are 18 and older before they can download apps on a cell phone are just fine with that same 16 year old girl getting married to a 45 year old man? If a 35 year old man is exchanging nude pictures with a 16 year girl, he’s going to go to prison for a while. But, if he marries that same young girl and starts having kids, a majority of the Senate is perfectly ok with that arrangement? Am I missing something? Because typically the older man – and almost always an older man – is not the one who ends up with the bad end of the stick in this deal.
Let me give you a real-life example. My grandmother.
My grandmother was an Iowa girl with an indomitable will growing up in Waterloo Iowa in 1930. She was not going to be told what to do, and one weekend she and her 22 year old boyfriend decided they were going to drive over from Iowa to Illinois to get married. She claimed she was 18. Nobody verified anything at the time, because this was a long time before electronic records. And on the 28th of December in 1931 my grandmother Lanore became a 16 year old bride. From what family stories note, the families were displeased once this came to light, but, what were they going to do? They were married.
A year later, grandma was giving birth to one of my aunts. By the time she was 22, she’d had three kids, with much of their marriage spent with a husband who joined the military and ended up overseas for much of WWII. In time the war was over and married life continued, what seemed like a good idea when she was 16 left her divorced at age 34 with three kids.
She got married again right away in 1950. But in a story that was never mentioned for many decades, the two youngest including my mom ended up living down the street with neighbors, as the new husband didn’t have an interest in the three kids that came along with the marriage. For better or worse, possibly for the better, he dropped dead of a heart attack leaving this once child bride not just divorced but also widowed by 35. The daughters still there were able to come home.
Thankfully, things stabilized with a third marriage a few years later to the person I and my cousins always grew up knowing as our grandfather. But the whole point is that despite some who try to say that’s what we did “way back when,” child brides could still bounce around from crappy situation to crappy situation, with a chunk of that burden coming back on the kids. It wasn’t abusive to my knowledge. But by the same token, it’s not something that any of us would refer to as “good.” Child marriage is not something that should be romanticized.
Yet, here we are, nearly 100 years later after my grandmother did it, supposedly 100 years better educated and more enlightened. And we still have people fooled by some illusion, whether hypnotized by religion or weirdly romanticized notions of the past that try to find justifications for marrying off 16 year old girls to older men like they are Irish Traveller brides.
There is not one of us who would say we don’t want to protect our kids. But as noted above, in the same breath, coming out of the same people’s mouths there are just too many who say kids should not be exposed to certain scandalous ideas in high school libraries, or have a remote possibility of looking at naughty pictures on-line, yet they are happy to cast a vote saying it’s ok that a 16 year old girl should be able to get married to their 29 year old boyfriend…. because they have a license from the state that says it’s somehow ok?
As one study noted, Some 60,000 marriages since 2000 occurred at an age or spousal age difference that should have been considered a sex crime. In about 88% of those marriages, the marriage license became a “get out of jail free” card for a would-be rapist under state law that specifically allowed within marriage what would otherwise be considered statutory rape.
People might think I’m using girls as an example too much. But look at the statistics. There really aren’t roving packs of cougars out trying to marry 16 year old boys. Of the child marriages that take place, 86% involve minor girls to 14% boys.
And if you listened to the testimony in committee, once they get into those situations and they try to escape, state laws make it near impossible for them to get out. A 16 year old typically can’t go to a women’s shelter. They cannot enter into a contract with an attorney to initiate a legal proceeding, because they’re a minor. Even better, many times minors who leave home to escape from an abusive spouse or impending forced marriage are typically considered runaways.
If you want to go read a good reference at what South Dakota just voted to continue to do to our daughters, the website Unchained at Last has more information than you might have ever wanted to read on the type of child-trafficking that the State Senate voted today to allow to continue in South Dakota.
We can do better for our daughters. And today, we should have.
Sue Peterson is a disgusting hypocrite. What a way to fail to step up.
Disgusting. Hard to look at anyone voting against this as anything other than apologists for pedophiles.
Tom Pischke opposing a measure to protect young women hammers that point home.
Don’t forget he was defending rapist’s rights a short time ago.
https://dakotawarcollege.com/sen-tom-pischke-breaks-with-senators-votes-to-keep-sex-offenders-in-classrooms/
The law is good the way it is, keep govt out of our lives. It’s all between the peoppe ages 16 abd their parents
Anon 11:37 Yes it is all between the pe-o-ppe’s.
Did I hear correctly that Carley validated his position by saying, “Sex between an adult and a minor is better if the two are married than if they are not.”
Excuse me, I have to go scream into the void now. Bye.
If he did, then that might be the basis of the best attack postcard ever.
Just when you think you can’t be more horrified by this legislative session…..
Every single senator who voted for this bill to die should be blasted on a mailer in the next primary. I don’t want to hear another word from any of them about protecting kids. They are all hypocrites. As for Amber Hulse and Red Dawn Foster, what the hell? Kind of expected from the rest, but those two were surprising.
Amber has turned out to be a real disappointment. She is more focused on headlines than legislating and seems out of her depth on some of these issues. Needed more life experiences before running.
Agreed…..At least we knew what we were getting and where JFM stood on things. Hulse is all over the board.
JFM was horrible and I expected better of Hulse. It is like someone is writing and posting for her but it is not very good being cobbled and botched together from some hard right sources. Her posts are all over the top which given her education she has to be smarter and a better person that this unless she has a political handler.
So the law stayed the same as it’s always been? This has always been legal in South Dakota, so why is it a crisis today?
Because it’s gross. And when you have an opportunity to fix something, you fix it. You don’t continue to live in the dark ages.
My friend was married at sixteen and, now in her sixties and recently widowed, mourns the loss of her husband of over forty years. How is that gross?
Some minors would be very responsible beer drinkers. Probably would just have a drink with dinner or a cigarette here and there. But we outlaw all minors from drinking because it is generally not a good idea and puts them at risk. I’m happy your friend had a good experience. She was also living in an age prior to a huge sex trafficking problem, endemic actually. You want solutions or are you ok to let sex trafficking continue at the rate it is?
Daily reminder that men across the world need their government to tell them they can’t marry children.
But in SD you can marry children!!! Come get em!
Gross.
As a society we don’t know how to treat older teens and younger adults. There is a lack of consistency here.
I am reminded of a Brookings School District (and perhaps others?) policy which required me to call to tell them when my 18 year old “child” wasn’t going to be in school on any given day. I knew she wasn’t the only 18 year old high school senior, so I asked why these adults couldn’t be responsible for their own attendance. Well, they couldn’t. I thought it was a dumb policy.
So 16 is old enough to get married, but not old enough to drop out of school; 18 is old enough to drop out of school but not old enough to call in sick.
This needs to be figured out.
Manifesto Mikey Z launched into a tirade this morning being all mad a Pat but here is what is so alarming. Mikey Z from what I briefly took away from this say 1-12 girls off limits. 13-18 are old enough to marry!
How many Mikey Z like minded so called freedom lovers believe this also?
13 years old going up yet still being minors getting married.
Oh? Where’s that?
He posted early this morning on the South Dakota Grassroots Republican FB page and was very upset. It was very revealing and highly doubt a father or mother would approve of what Manifesto Mikey Z posted. He probably posted it elsewhere on his pages but he was mad at you for the restriction of age.
Ah. That’s a closed private group. I’d want it closed too if I was demanding marrying 13 year old girls.
I looked also. That crazy Sd Grassroots Republican page is bad enough but even they must have removed Manifesto Mikey Z’s post.
Maybe among those like minded Freedom Lovers this is all supposed to be hush hush? Mikey brought it out in the open?
A friend of mine recently lost her husband of 45 years. They were married when she was 16. Why is this an issue?
Sex trafficking is a huge problem. Google minors being forced to marry. Do you care?
I am sorry to say, but when adults want to sex traffic children, they can marry them at age 16 and have complete legal control of them. I don’t know what religion they are and don’t care.
Teenagers are constantly getting each other pregnant. Why are we pretending that they’re children? They may often be immature, but biologicaly they are adults.
Teen pregnancy is actually the lowest it’s been in decades. What kind of creep are you also, based on your argument as soon as a girl begins menstruation she can be wed? Piss off.
Way to misrepresent my statement. How many of us had classmates in high school who were teen mothers? How many of us have grandchildren who are the children of teen mothers? Let’s deal with reality.
Yes, let’s deal with reality. And the modern, not past, reality is that teen pregnancy is dropping. https://abcnews.go.com/US/teen-births-us-fall-record-low-total-drops/story?id=109572998
Additionally, forcing teens into marriage is not a solution, just a bandaid. A real solution would be comprehensive counseling, prenatal and postnatal care, and comprehensive early childcare assistance, but like those things would ever happen.
No one is talking about forcing teens into marriage.
They absolutely are being forced into marriage, unless you are being willfully ignorant. 86% of the people who are getting married at 16 and 17 are girls.
Women of all ages marry older men in greater numbers than men marry older women.
That’s cool, but we’re not talking about adults. The developmental differences between a 24 and 28 year old are tiny compared to a 16 and 20 year old.
Enter Joel Koskan. He would claim it was consent right?
Alternative headline: “Republicans keep laws in place that say it’s ok for a 16 year old girl to marry a 40 year old man”
No, you’re wrong. Quit defending pedophiles.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10123900/
if a pair of minors produce a child, who bears the financial responsibility for them and their child?
By allowing them to marry, the grandparents shed their parental rights and responsibilities, and the taxpayers have to pick up the tab.
I think that stinks..
The taxpayers don’t HAVE to pick up the tab.