Weekly News Post #20

Child Marriage

News first aired in February 2018 saying that two democratic lawmakers proposed bills to prevent marriages where a party is under 18 years of age in Tennessee, after a source cited three cases in which 10 year old girls were married to adult men; however, the state has disputed this.

A current loophole in the American law allows children of any age to legally marry. Although someone cannot marry on their own unless they're 18 years of age, or 16 with parental consent, law states that is a pregnancy is involved, age doesn't matter- considering a judge abides. This has resulted in cases such as the case of Sherry Johnson who was forced into marriage at 11 years old after being raped and iimpregnated; now 58 years old, she has pushed for child marriage to be banned. The Pew Research Centre says that 5.5 out of every 1,000 15-17 year olds in Tennessee were married from 2010 to 2014.

Law 3

Republican lawmakers practically killed the bills when Majority Leader Glen Casada, R-Franklin motioned to send the proposal to summer study in the House Civil Justice Subcommittee; it's known bills often don't come back to be passed after being sent to the summer study sessions. Attorney and former state sen. David Fowler argued in an email that the passing of the bills would interfere with a lawsuit he's mounting to counter the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to legalise gay marriage. Many supporters and LGBY members see allowing child marriage as insulting gay couples. Jernigan, who propsed the bill referred to the situation as "disgraceful" and the "Family Action Council want to continue to let 13-year-olds to get married in the state at the sake of their court case against same-sex couples". However, House Majority Leader Glen Casada, said House Republicans will reverse their decision and bring back the bill earlier on in March.

Child marriage is a huge problem around the world, even in first world countered where it may not be expected. The Independent states that over the past 15 years, more that 200,000 children were married in the US. In the UK, the UK Forced Marriage Unit's helpline was presented with 1,428 cases of forced marriages, with 317 of these cases being children 17 and under. Many people view child marriage as a form of abuse and neglect towards children, and to me, it is. Children are forced to marry grown adults, putting them at risk of such things as domestic violence and refusing them a childhood. Statistics show that children forced into marriage are more likely to experience domestic violence; girls married before 15 years old, are 50% more likely to face physical or sexual violence from their partners according to Girls Not Brides, and yet the proposed bans eliminating child marriage was once refuted before being taken into serious consideration. In my opinion child marriages around the world should be eliminated as although children are meant to have rights (at least they are in first world countries) and yet by forcing them into marriage to adults, their rights are pretty much revoked and they're exposed to such things as child pregnancy and domestic violence, alongside not having a childhood.

Jordan Buie writes for the Tennessean, covering state politics. This role would probably require him to be unbiased and present unbiased news coverage; however, the written article about the bills banning child marriages presented more democratic ideology and arguments about the bills. This can be seen as the ending paragraph of the article was a quote from democrat Jernigan saying "It's disgraceful. I'm embarrassed for the State of Tennessee, and I can only pray that we bring this back next year and not let them get in the way".


Reference;

Buie, Jordan. (2018). Tennessee Republicans reverse on child marriage ban bill, will bring it back for debate. Available: https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/politics/2018/03/08/republicans-reverse-decision-bring-back-bill-ban-child-marriages-debate/408765002/. Last accessed 27th Mar 2018.