Kentucky Christian-Right group stalls anti-child-marriage bill

Some remarkably backwards practices are still remarkably commonplace in some parts. For instance, Kentucky still has child marriages, at least in some cases: Kids 17 and younger can marry if they have their parents’ permission (and you know some of those parents are roping them into it), and in particular, a boy can marry any young girl he impregnates. Not only are kids who are too young to figure out birth control also too young to make this sort of decision, it opens the door to kids marrying adults, particularly young girls pushed by their parents into shacking up with the predatory older man who impregnated them.

But that’s changing, or so it was until recently. A new bill would ban marriages for anyone under the age of 17 and force 17-year-olds to get a judge’s permission.

[State Sen. Julie Raque] Adams filed the bill after media reports detailing how Kentucky has the third-highest rate of child marriage in the country — with more than 10,000 children married from 2000 to 2015, according to the Tahirih Justice Center — and the accounts of women like Donna Pollard, who was encouraged by her mother to marry an abusive man who was nearly 31 when she was just 16.

A law to stop impulsive kids from entering wedlock, or more realistically, to ban meddling dinosaurian parents from pushing antiquated social customs on their children. What reasonable people could oppose that?

The religious-conservative Family Foundation of Kentucky are not reasonable people.

Asked Thursday morning who was lobbying against her bill, Adams told Insider Louisville that it was the Family Foundation of Kentucky — one of the more prominent groups in Frankfort advocating for socially conservative causes — who argued that it “diminishes parental rights.”

Adams added that she and other legislators are now working on a compromise bill that she hopes will satisfy the concerns of opponents, but added that the problem is that “many times the parents are the problem,” as abusive ones sometimes send their own kids “into the arms of a predator.” Noting Kentucky’s shameful national ranking on child marriage, Adams added: “This is not kids marrying kids. This is kids marrying adults.”

Any parent who doesn’t see a problem with child brides is not a parent whose rights deserve respect.

The Society For Keeping Kentucky a Punchline has weighed in with an objection. https://t.co/79uqODfzWc

— John Scalzi (@scalzi) March 3, 2018

(via Friendly Atheist & a retweet by @fark)