As aCW is squirming around the question on his own thread and coming up with ever more elaborate and goofball ways to deflect away from it I thought I'd branch it out here. This isn't just about Phil Robertson's notorious comments about getting girls at 15/16 before they pick pockets at 20 apparently but that's the kind of mindset that has its voice here disturbingly. Time and again it's said or implied on here that the societal acceptance of homosexuality will open the floodgates to paedophilia and yet there's some here who seem to have no problem with children being married as long as the parents condone such an arrangement.
Thoughts?
At the parental level, there's no way I'd give permission to my own children without major mitigating circumstances, and pregnancy would not be one of those circumstances. It would have to be something at the level of granting a dying wish. Having said that, 18 is a legal adult, so this is in reference to Phil Roberton's magical 15/16 (or younger, for those wanting to hark back to the supposed age of the biblical Mary).
At the personal level, I know two women married at 16 and at 17. Both into long, unhappy marriages. Of course someone can live an unhappy marriage no matter what age they get married, but the chances of living an unhappy marriage are greater the younger the age. How many of those marriages stay together for security alone, because the wife in particular has no resources to support herself in the event of a divorce because she never had the opportunity to get an education or usable job experience?
At a conceptual level, it doesn't matter what marriageable age used to be once upon a time in the fairy tales of people's imaginations. In 1900, the expected life span of a U.S. citizen was 47. In the 1930s it was 62, which is why the social security payout age began about that time. Never has the expected life span been what is is now (~80 in the U.S.), so when you put childhood into the context of that longer life span, 15 doesn't even mean the same thing.
Bottom line: anyone today condoning such a young age for marriage has power and control issues, whether they'll admit it or not - or whether they know it or not. (Ignorance based in being taught submission from a young age and they simply don't know any other way. When it comes to that kind of upbringing, Fred Phelp's granddaughter and ex-follower Megan Phelps-Roper comes to mind.)
Unfollow: How a prized daughter of the Westboro Baptist Church came to question its beliefs
(A terrific article, well worth taking the time to read it.)
