200,000 Child Brides In America. Worse than Afghanistan?

I think the moral compass of your country has a higher standard than here in the US.

Something from the 1950's!!

Jerry Lee Lewis Anyone remember this?

"I’m Myra," answered the girl. "Jerry’s wife."

He was astonished. "And how old is Myra?" he asked Jerry Lee.

fifteen," the singer replied, obviously thinking that sounded suitably mature.

It wasn’t. Despite Lewis’s assertions that Myra was "a grown woman", as far as Britain was concerned, she was below the age of consent.

The headlines the next day were not good for the star’s first day in Britain.
But they were about to get much worse when it was quickly discovered that Lewis, 22 at the time of the wedding, had been lying.
Myra wasn’t 15. She was 13, and, therefore, absolutely not a "grown woman".
What’s more, she was the singer’s first cousin once removed.
And if that wasn’t enough, it was also revealed that he may have been bigamously married to her, since he hadn’t yet become divorced from his second wife, whom he’d married at 17, having wed his first wife at 14.

www.dailymail.co.uk...

a reply to: redhorse
No, the OP's number was actually not far off. It was fairly easy to google "200,000 child marriages USA" and get a return with what they claimed.

www.google.com...

Anyway, NPR's take on the 200k child marriages over 15 years:

Based on state marriage license data and other sources, advocacy groups and experts estimate that between 2000 and 2015 alone, well over 200,000 children — nearly all of them girls — were married. In nearly all cases the husband was an adult.

Twenty-five states do not set a minimum age at which a person can get married, and eight more set it at an age lower than 16. Alaska and North Carolina, for example, set the age at 14. In New Hampshire it's 13 for girls, 14 for boys.

www.npr.org...

Edit: And I know there's a discrepancy between Pew & NPR's numbers here, but I assume there's quite a few divorces and annulments not being accounted for by Pew, they're probably just counting standing marriages, not dissolved ones, in their total.

Second edit: And that's not counting the under 15's, either. So keep both of those in mind when gunning to dispute the figures.

originally posted by: Nyiah

originally posted by: Wide-Eyes
a reply to: Painterz

That's seriously f#cked up. Any idea which branch of religion is practising this?

I read at one point that Idaho has the highest rate of child marriage in the US, but that's an older statistic, early 2000's, I think. Via a google search, Pew says W Virginia and Texas, ironically, have the highest rate of child marriage now. However, this only counts 15-17 as the youngest age group, so it's probably not accurate either, Idaho might still be in the lead.
www.pewresearch.org...

I'm having a rough time finding detailed, verifiable stats for both age & religious rankings. I think we can tentatively suss out likely sect culprits in states & regions from the available info, though.

"About 57,800 minors in the U.S. ages 15 to 17 were married as of 2014. That might sound like a lot of people (and it is), but it’s also just five of every 1,000 in that age group, a Pew Research Center analysis of 2014 data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey finds."


Let that sink in.......................................... near the same number of soldiers died in the Vietnam war.

a reply to: Plotus

Yeah, when you look at the numbers that way, it's kind of like a slow-going, invisible war on the vulnerable, isn't it?

Could you back this claim up with sources? Otherwise it's another idiot screaming in a vacuum... No offense.
a reply to: Painterz

a reply to: SecretsoftheBlueApples

Nyiah provided some info....

www.pewresearch.org...

originally posted by: Raggedyman
Can you give me some kind of reference where child sexual abuse is acceptable biblically. You are so ignorant it beggars belief

In biblical times the life span would probably have been around 50yrs except

for the occasional methuselah.... so it was perhaps prudent to procreate at an

earlier age? Women/young girls were not educated and so were only house

trained to look after men?


Today females are educated to the same level as men are productive in the work

place and quite capable of living to 100yrs .... so comparisions with biblical times is

futile (apples to oranges comes to mind)


Today people in general are better educated making what was normal in biblical

times unacceptable now, and adjustments for that need to take place

so we dont have child abuse. There is a need to move with the times on this and

all other things.

originally posted by: eletheia

originally posted by: Raggedyman
Can you give me some kind of reference where child sexual abuse is acceptable biblically. You are so ignorant it beggars belief

In biblical times the life span would probably have been around 50yrs except

for the occasional methuselah.... so it was perhaps prudent to procreate at an

earlier age? Women/young girls were not educated and so were only house

trained to look after men?


Today females are educated to the same level as men are productive in the work

place and quite capable of living to 100yrs .... so comparisions with biblical times is

futile (apples to oranges comes to mind)


Today people in general are better educated making what was normal in biblical

times unacceptable now, and adjustments for that need to take place

so we dont have child abuse. There is a need to move with the times on this and

all other things.




No sex till marriage.
That's what Abrahamic religion, Christianity teaches

Where is sex before marriage acceptable in the old and New Testament

The study being referenced is bunk. This topic came up before and it was debunked. I don't have time to find the thread. It looks at a wide age group and presents the numbers in a way that make it look for common than it actually is...

First, there are a handful of cases where a really young minor (less than 14 yrs old) is married. Keep in mind this is over like a decade or two, not an annual occurrence. Literally like 10 or 15 instances.

Second, the vast majority are usually over 15 and there is typically a pregnancy involved.

Child marriage is not common in the US by any stretch. It is not a culturally accepted norm. Does it occur? Sure, in small numbers, but to present as some normal thing is extremely misleading. It isn't even that common in backwater communities.

originally posted by: Raggedyman

Where is sex before marriage acceptable in the old and New Testament

'Sex' is 'the human condition' once an 'adult' it is no one else's business

sex has always been around both in and out of marriage!!


Were Adam and Eve married

a reply to: Nyiah

That deserves nothing more than the death penalty.

Religion... an effed up cult that leads the weak minded into servitude to men who would do this.

Ugh... not the christians themselves, but the religion.. in all it's forms, needs to be seen for what it is, a cult. Be it middle eastern or western. followers are prey, and the predators wear stupid garb and pretend to worship some deity.

it's a sickness.

Well there are massive sects of polygamy all over the states.
Look at that monster Warren Jeffs for example.

In my opinion religion should never trump the law of the land.

Your post has no source so let me give one
www.dailymail.co.uk...
a reply to: Painterz

I like you more and more every day man!



a reply to: badw0lf

a reply to: Painterz

Was sent a link about this last night... Pretty relevant if you ask me:

article< br />

Conservative Christians Kill Bill Banning Child Marriage In Kentucky

The modest bill would not totally ban child marriages, but would require a judge to review records to make sure that the child was not the victim of abuse, that there are not domestic violence incident involving either party and that the adult is not a registered sex-offender. The bill would require that the judge deny the right to marry if there was a pregnancy that resulted from the adult spouse molesting the child.

Bottom line: Kentucky Republicans, facing pressure from a powerful conservative Christian lobby, refuses to protect children as young as 13 from being forced into marriage. And they call it “Christian love.”

So yes it's happening here, and legislators refuse to pass bills that protect the children, who by law are not old enough to consent.

a reply to: redhorse

Stockholm was your friend in HS..Wasn't he.

originally posted by: eletheia

originally posted by: Raggedyman

Where is sex before marriage acceptable in the old and New Testament

'Sex' is 'the human condition' once an 'adult' it is no one else's business

sex has always been around both in and out of marriage!!


Were Adam and Eve married

Where is the new/old testament acceptable today..anywhere? So much human mind disease with religion now and forever more.

originally posted by: Painterz
Girls as young as 10 have been forced into marriages under legal loopholes that allow minors to be married in certain situations, such as parental consent or pregnancy. With over 200,000 minors married to older men over the last 15 years alone.

Is this the Taliban in action across the USA? Sadly not. This is a significant cultural movement which is seeing old men marrying underaged girls because 'God'.

In May Chris Christie refused to sign in a law banning the practice because he said it would conflict with 'religious customs'. Was he protecting Islamic customs? Of course not, this is white Christian custom.

At least 207,468 minors married in the US between 2000 and 2015, according to data compiled by Unchained At Last and investigative series Frontline.

The youngest wedded were three 10-year-old girls in Tennessee who married men aged 24, 25 and 31 in 2001.

Children as young as 12 were granted marriage licences in Alaska, Louisiana and South Carolina, while 11 other states allowed 13-year-olds to wed.

More than 1,000 children aged 14 or under were granted marriage licences.

Pretty shocking numbers. This is exactly the sort of thing people regularly and rightly criticise Sharia law for allowing, yet here it is happening on a massive scale across America.

links? i'm a white christian living in the good ol' bible thumpin' heart of south east georgia, and i have NEVER heard of any christians (white or otherwise) marrying children. what i HAVE heard of is people getting jailed, having thier houses burned down, or simply being shot or beaten to death for #in' with little kids. any links to legitimate factual articles or websites would be greatly appreciated .

My cousin got married when she was sixteen and my oldest daughter got married when she was sixteen. They both had a good life, it was actually common for girls to get married at sixteen years back. I actually do not see a problem with that, most of the people I know where the woman was around sixteen or seventeen when they got married are still married. That must be a bad thing nowadays to stay married all your life.

I can't see parents setting up marriages though. It should be the choice of the people getting married. I won't condemn arranged marriages, it is not my right to dictate the lifes of others. I do not think that it is right though, I chose my wife, sure I made a mistake the first time but I learned from my mistake. I have a very nice daughter from my first wife though, she has five kids. They are good kids too. I do not approve of the way society is going on this issue, people need to respect the rights of others to believe differently than they do. But, you do have the right to complain if they try to push their way on you and it negatively effects you financially or socially.