When will they ban child marriages in SA?
Girls as young as 11 are being married off to their rapists in order to avoid embarrassing criminal investigations and the shame of having children born out of wedlock.
When will voters decide that enough is enough and demand that their sharia-supporting wahhabist leaders join the rest of the world in the 21st century? This is unworthy of a modern democracy.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
For all the fundy whining about Sharia law, does anyone doubt that they'd embrace it in a heartbeat if it replaced all mentions of Muslim with Christian?
Hope is the denial of reality
I'll agree with you, Aimless but. . . let's not pretend all the irrationality and poor decision-making is on their side and not yours. The most reasonable thing to do is to tie it to the age of consent and the related statutory rape laws. If you're old enough to start having consensual sex with your partner and to risk having a baby (even if that's stupid of you), which is only a semi-reversible decision, you're old enough to marry them, which is a definitely reversible decision. Maybe that means raising the age of consent for people who really aren't old enough to be making decisions with such large potential consequences. . .
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
So as an atheist who thinks religions are fucked up, basing the law on religion is doubly fucked up and abusing girls and women due to religion is trebly fucked up ... what point are you trying to prove? You seem to have a hard on for "two wrongs make a right" or something like that.
Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer
The article states that some of these marriages would be statutory rape ...
Going by the article, they're actually sexual assault. And a wedding ring doesn't prevent something from being a sexual assault, even if incredibly wrong-headed types refuse to prosecute them. . .
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
I have no major principal objections to harmonising laws governing age of consent, statutory rape and marrying age, but I find it worrying that you refuse to acknowledge the legal, social and psychological circumstances that make child marriage different from children just having sex.
You typically don't need a lawyer to escape from someone who wants to have sex with you, but a child who is coerced or otherwise pressured into entering a marriage, frequently with an adult, can find it extremely difficult to escape if they want/need to. Shelters are often not open to children, organisations can be prosecuted for helping children escape, children can't always turn to a family court and file for divorce on their own behalf, lawyers aren't often inclined to help minors with this kind of thing, and CPS and the like don't deal with marriages. If you turn to the police, they can return you to the same parents that may have pressured you to get married in the first place. While adults in a community are not usually inclined to pressure children to have sex, they may be far more inclined to pressure children to get married and then to stay in that marriage, shouldering all the culturally mandated obligations that come with marriage in these backwards communities (eg. taking care of your husband's needs, "doing the right thing" by staying in a harmful relationship, etc).
A child can always say no to sex, and, if that's not possible, turn to the police for help--at least in theory, because, by law, you don't have to say no for it to be a crime for someone, especially an adult, to have sex with you. However, if your parent marries you off to someone, it becomes much more difficult to say no to sex or to get help with saying no, because it's already been established that it's okay for your partner to have sex with you, that everyone's going to go along with it.
Marriage is certainly reversible, but, by marrying off a child, especially to an adult, you weaken that child's right to control what's done to his or her body, which you will recall is something I also dislike about restrictive abortion laws. That's what happens in practice. Let's not mince words: it means that you enable rape, and not just of the statutory variety. I don't consider that "reversible", but I'm also not particularly keen on giving parents the right to make their children go through with a pregnancy so perhaps our standards for rationality are just irreconcilably different.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
About a third of these children were wed to someone over 21 years of age but it's difficult to determine exactly how many of the marriages conflicted with statutory rape laws.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
A great majority of the child marriages involve girls and adult men. Such a sexual relationship would often violate statutory rape laws, but marriage sometimes makes it legal.
My only concern in the article is that it doesn't for most of it seem to draw a line between 12 year olds and 17 year olds. 17 year olds are not children in the same way as a 12 or 14 year old is.
Inadequate reporting unfortunately.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
The major issue is that I'm not in agreement with most of the above here. Shelters are indeed open to children, and while I suppose organizations helping them could be maliciously prosecuted for things like kidnapping or endangerment any decent judge would force summary dismissal. Someone with standing might be required for legal proceedings (though the marriage license should have a provision for that), lawyers certainly don't ignore minors who need such help, and CPS deals with minors period which means it absolutely will step in whether the abuse is from a parent or a spouse.
Now all that is the de jure situation of course. As a de facto matter, when the official arms of the government are actually supporting the practice of marriage to fend of rape charges and the like, that doesn't actually happen. The problem is, when the official arms of the government are out to subvert the law, they're going to look the other way regardless.
Now, this is something that is more likely to happen in rural environments where there are less resources available to help these minors. But. . . the same obstacle applies; the actual authorities have to be willing to help out and if they're turning a blind eye like this in the first place, that's not something they'd magically stop doing.
Last edited by LittleFuzzy; 05-28-2017 at 07:40 PM.
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
I'm good with a blanket ban of child marriages of anyone under 16. This isn't the Dark Ages.
Sorry, no, it is.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...wed/391697002/
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
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