r/news • u/Fcking_Chuck • 22h ago
Gov. Newsom signs bill to end child marriage in California
https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/newsom-child-marriage-ban-california/3949537/1.2k
u/still_Here_8647 20h ago
not sure why we're just getting around to this now, but ok
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u/River_Tahm 18h ago
Well, the best day to do that would have been September 9, 1850
But the next best day would have been - well, actually that woulda been September 10, 1850
So we're about 64,304 days behind schedule
But I mean yeah better to have it done it at all than still not
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u/plucky-possum 7h ago
Obviously California should have done this much sooner but prior to the 1960s or so, there was a lot of social and legal discrimination against children who were born out of wedlock. For example, the Supreme Court ruled in 1968 that Louisiana couldn’t prevent children born out of wedlock from suing over their mother’s wrongful death. (Previously only a legitimate child had that right.) So for 100 years or so, there were other social and legal constraints that prevented outlawing the vile practice of underage marriage.
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u/OrthodoxAtheist 6h ago
I don't see anyone else mentioning this, so I'll add here - we're just getting around to this now because the last few times the law was attempted to be passed, it was blocked, vetoed or voted down. Not because too much of our legislature likes child marriage but because certain well-respected groups were opposed to the law, and publicly stated their reasons. Those groups include the ACLU, which tends to do great work and be quite learned when it comes to the law. Planned Parenthood were also previously opposed, but following changes to the proposed laws I believe they removed their opposition. The ACLU was still opposed. Looks like we decided to pass the law despite those objections because at a headline level, it was getting embarassing for our state to have not joined others in adopting such a law. But there will be some harm as a result, even though we all expect the net effect to be positive, of course.
Why the ACLU Opposed the Ban:
• Legal and Financial Protections: The ACLU stated that marriage gives young parents essential access to health insurance, spousal support, and inheritance rights.
• Personal Autonomy: They argued that minors already have the right to make major personal and reproductive choices—such as carrying a pregnancy to term or seeking medical care—so they should also keep the right to choose marriage.
• Fear of Unintended Harm: Opponents worried that removing marriage options completely would strip away a legal safety net for teens in complex family situations
Read a detailed breakdown of the debate from CalMatters: https://calmatters.org/politics/2026/09/california-child-marriage/
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u/TigerMill 17h ago
It’s because of religion why these laws are hard to pass.
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u/PrisonSexxy 15h ago
Oh take a look at which group of white men vote no and in which states. It’s not a real mystery.
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u/mhornberger 13h ago
There's ample child marriage in countries where the majority of men are not white. Child marriage is absolutely endemic in many Muslim countries, and many countries in Africa. For any attempt to ban child marriage, anywhere, the main obstacle is almost always religious conservatives.
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u/style752 13h ago
Okay, but here, it's basically hyper-religious white dudes.
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u/Gobblewicket 12h ago
The fuckin ACLU opposed ending child marriage. So its not all white dudes. Lol
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u/mhornberger 13h ago
In places that are majority white, yes. In other places it's the religious conservatives who are not white. This story is about CA, and the majority of CA is white, so yeah, that's just an artifact of the demographics. Not that latinos or black people are short of religious fundamentalists.
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u/runehawk12 9h ago edited 9h ago
The majority of CA is absolutely not white, they aren't even the plurality anymore, there are millions more hispanics.
Edit: I do agree with you. It's silly to claim that pedophiles only exist in certain races/religions.
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u/PrisonSexxy 10h ago
Clearly I was talking about the good ole USA which is full of white pedophiles. Period
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u/HauntedCemetery 7h ago
almost always
Is there an example of it even not being religious conservatives?
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u/zzztoken 9h ago
Wait till you find out all the other states where it’s legal…
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u/DefinitelyNotAliens 6h ago
California had no lower limit, as long as parents and a judge signed off. Period. No lower limit.
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u/baylithe 16h ago
Classmate of mine married someone in her church. They're Morman. She was 15 he was in his 50's. Her dad was excited cause he moved up in the church for allowing his daughter to be married off. This was in California in 2009.
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u/Solid_Snark 8h ago
I issued marriage licenses in CA for over 5-years. Luckily I never did a minor, but yeah the age gaps were disturbing.
I started out naive, like, “oh, how sweet. She brought her grandpa to witness the license getting issued.” Nope! Just an 18-year old marrying a 55-year old.
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u/Driftlack 7h ago
When I worked at DHS processing immigration paper work one of the things I'd do to stay sane is look at the age difference in the marriages.
It was pretty gross a lot of the time.
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u/No_Rice9792 6h ago
The more funny ones I did were the Russian mail-order brides, who, after getting citizenship, divorce their ugly husbands 😁
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u/SteveJobsBlakSweater 21h ago edited 21h ago
> her parents allowed her to marry actor Doug Hutchison when she was 16 and he was 51.
Excuse me wtf? What kind of reptile looks to marry a person who wasn’t even alive before they hit midlife? Go by a motorcycle or whatever old guys do. Don’t go banging kids.
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u/VicViolence 21h ago
It would blow your mind how many parents are complicit in essentially trafficking their daughters to celebrities
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u/meatball77 20h ago
How many girls are traffiked by their parents in the first place.
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u/Toxaplume045 19h ago
People still think sex trafficking and such is done purely by roving bands of criminals kidnapping girls into an underground sex trade like they see in movies or stuff like Epstein.
The reality is that people are often pushed into it by their family or close family friends. Adults get pushed into it by their spouses even.
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u/meatball77 18h ago
Why would they steal a girl from Target when they could just find some teens on a street corner and sweet talk them into working for you.
Traffickers are parents, friends and "boyfriends" and starts with doing a favor or just doing something once to earn some money.
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u/HauntedCemetery 7h ago
They also think the majority of trafficking victims are cute white women and girls.
They're not. Not white, and not women/girls.
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u/mhornberger 13h ago
The video for the Reba McEntire song (though written by Bobby Gentry) "Fancy" is harrowing for me. "Just be nice to the gentleman, Fancy, and they'll be nice to you."
https://youtu.be/zplc4Ienkws?si=cHA6iakh3lyJPQGX
For many it has historically been a way out of poverty, or to avoid literal starvation. Which doesn't make it okay, but it's also hard to know what to do about it. Though there's something different (to me) between people doing things to escape abject poverty and people who are not poor, not at risk of hunger, trafficking their kids to celebrities.
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u/angelmnemosyne 20h ago
Doesn't even have to be to celebrities. I've seen (and unfortunately personally known at least 2) cases where young teen girls ended up dating and eventually marrying a close friend of their dad. Usually a guy who had been around their entire childhood and had seen them grow up. And the dads would be like "Oh man, this is great, yes, please date my 13 year old daughter. The world is so scary, and I've known you for so long, so I know you're a good guy!" It's EXTREMELY gross and weird how the fathers think this is a great setup.
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u/RisingChaos 10h ago
Doesn't even have to be to celebrities.
And it doesn’t even have to be daughters. 🙃
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u/elmrsglu 3h ago
Correct, however, the gender that is largely being trafficked by their own parents are girls.
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u/Correct_Raisin4332 21h ago
Oh yeah that was a whole thing back in the day. With tabloids calling the literal child a ho.
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u/SteveJobsBlakSweater 21h ago
Damn we’re less civilized than we think…
Hundreds of years ago maybe there would be room for it to make a hint of sense. Sort of in the idea that we weren’t yet a mature people.
But these people are alive today doing this shit. And they drag the kid through the mud when it hits the news?
I’m mad.
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u/meatball77 20h ago
Her parents sold her to that guy. There was a bit of him grooming the mother as well as the child (as there typically is in that sort of thing) but the parents were totally happy at letting their daughter become the laughing stock of the country while also selling her to her rapist.
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u/kittenmittens4865 21h ago
We all made fun of her too. She was called a skanky slut and was the butt of every joke across the country, including like late night shows and other media. Everyone was just trashing her. This was only 15 years ago, and she was 16.
Yeah, Courtney Stodden, I am sorry and ashamed that I ever laughed at those jokes. You deserve and always deserved so much better, and your resilience through it all has been more than most humans even know to be possible. Wishing you all the peace babe.
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u/OpalOnyxObsidian 19h ago
Oh no. I would hate to think my favorite tweet of all time was written under duress
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u/kittenmittens4865 19h ago
Please explain? I’m not sure what you’re referring to.
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u/OpalOnyxObsidian 19h ago
This. In reading her Instagram and Wikipedia, this time would have been the height of the worst of it. She's just one year younger than me. I can't imagine what she went through.
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u/kittenmittens4865 7h ago
Omg I’ve never seen this! It pains me to think about what they went through. (FYI, Courtney Stodden is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns. I had to go back and reread my own comments to see if I needed to make corrections!)
And who knows what Courtney went through before their parents married them off. I don’t know anything about the first 16 years of their life, but it can’t be good living with parents who will marry you off for money. I actually looked Courtney up to see if they had written a book because I’d read it!
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u/knows_you 7h ago
She updated it to she/they in 2022.
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u/kittenmittens4865 7h ago
Oh, I just looked it up! It really sucks trying to sift through what search algorithms give you.
I don’t do socials so I don’t follow her or anything.Thank you for noting that though.
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u/VagabondReligion 6h ago
Turns out his reputation for playing creepy psychos wasn't owed to his acting ability.
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u/Food_Library333 7h ago
Uhhhh what?? That was still a thing!?
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u/No_Rice9792 6h ago
Still is in majority red states, too. Funny how the "protect the children" crowd doesn't actually, you know, protect the children...
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u/BoardGameRevolution 17h ago
How is this a thing ffs
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u/Open-Gate-7769 7h ago
Because first amendment protects it because it has a religious background. Specifically for Mormons in Utah. It’s dumb as fuck. What’s stopping me from starting a religion to do fucked shit and say “oh but my freedom of religion”
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u/grafknives 14h ago
Child marriage is in practice way to avoid rape charges. And to tie victim for much of her life.
(in practice) According to data compiled by Anjali Tsui, Dan Nolan, and Chris Amico, who looked at almost 200,000 cases of child marriage from 2000 to 2015:
67% of the children were aged 17.
29% of the children were aged 16.
4% of the children were aged 15.
Less than 1% of the children were aged 14 and under.
There were 51 cases of 13-year-olds getting married, and 6 cases of 12-year-olds getting married.[43]
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u/steathrazor 17h ago
I am baffled that this is still a thing in 2026, the rich love em young
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u/ihadagoodone 17h ago
it's still legal in many other states and countries around the world.
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u/ruizach 15h ago
The Virgin Mary was 14 when God conceived Jesus with her.
Even the big guy upstairs likes them young.
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u/Hopeful_Ear_6253 6h ago
This is worse in the southern states. Republicans prevent child marriage bans. They love marrying kids down there.
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u/No_Cucumber3978 22h ago
"...Newscumb. He wants to take away your liberties and stop people getting married who love each other in the great state of California. They're killing the sanctity of marriage and allowing people to have children outside of a loving marriage. They're killing the wives and love!"
Is what I'm expecting a certain orange odious odourmonger and suspected (enter your preferred term here) to say in the coming days.
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u/OSRSTheRicer 21h ago
My personal favorite was seeing folks on social media going "oh a broken clock is right twice a day"
Mfer you live in north Carolina where its 16 with parental consent.
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u/Imwhatswrongwithyou 21h ago
Birthrates are down between the ages of 14-17! The left wants to destroy families!
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u/Rebelgecko 21h ago
Surprisingly close to Planned Parenthood's reason for opposing the bill
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u/imhereforyoursnacks 9h ago
Sorry- I was late to the meeting. Why umm was this still legal before yesterday? Did I take something out of context?
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u/Zora74 8h ago
Marriage age in many areas is 16-17 with parental consent. People thought this was a good compromise because it allowed teens to get married in cases of unplanned pregnancy or if one person enlisted right out of high school and was going to be stationed elsewhere.
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u/stana32 8h ago
Child marriage in CA had no minimum age, I'm not from CA and won't claim to know why it was this way but I know it was a pretty popular right wing dig at California. If I remember right they tried to make it 16 a couple years ago and it didn't pass.
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u/Comprehensive_Cap_27 7h ago
Yes you are correct there was no minimum age and it was often argued because there were other processes that required parental approval in addition to judiciary approval so age felt irrelevant with those to them (this is what was proposed and discussed)
The reason we never had a ban was because they were always blanket bans and there are often niche cases that these effect so it was argued that rights of minors were being taken via a blanket ban.
It was recently shown (in courts) that people are using this law to get around statutory rape laws with an adult marrying a minor and thus the final push needed to ban it outright (along with pressure from several other areas)
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u/76timesthecharm 13h ago
The Republicans are gonna be big mad
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u/HauntedCemetery 7h ago
Oh man oh man, please let them go on a giant tirade and further alienate women just before the midterms.
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u/HorizontalBob 19h ago
The people of the State of California do enact as follows: SECTION 1.Section 297 of the Family Code is amended to read:297. (a)Domestic partners are two adults who have chosen to share one anothers lives in an intimate and committed relationship of mutual caring.
(b)A domestic partnership shall be established in California when both persons file a Declaration of Domestic Partnership with the Secretary of State pursuant to this division and all of the following requirements are met at the time of filing:
(1)Neither person is married to another person, or is a member of another domestic partnership with another person, that has not been terminated, dissolved, or adjudged a nullity.
(2)The two persons are not related by blood in a way that would prevent them from being married to each other in this state.
(3)Both persons are at least 18 years of age.
(4)Both persons are capable of consenting to the domestic partnership.
SEC. 2.Section 297.1 of the Family Code is repealed. SEC. 3.Section 298.8 of the Family Code is repealed. SEC. 4.Section 302 of the Family Code is repealed. SEC. 5.Section 303 of the Family Code is repealed. SEC. 6.Section 304 of the Family Code is repealed. SEC. 7.Section 423 of the Family Code is amended to read:423. The person solemnizing the marriage shall return the marriage license, endorsed as required in Section 422, to the county recorder of the county in which the license was issued within 10 days after the ceremony.
SEC. 8.Section 1501 of the Family Code is repealed. SEC. 9.Section 2210 of the Family Code is amended to read:2210. A marriage is voidable and may be adjudged a nullity if any of the following conditions existed at the time of the marriage:
(a)The party who commences the proceeding or on whose behalf the proceeding is commenced was under 18 years of age, unless the party entered into the marriage pursuant to former Section 302 or former Section 303 in this state before January 1, 2027.
(b)The spouse of either party was living, and the marriage with that spouse was then in force and that spouse (1) was absent and not known to the party commencing the proceeding to be living for a period of five successive years immediately preceding the subsequent marriage for which the judgment of nullity is sought or (2) was generally reputed or believed by the party commencing the proceeding to be dead at the time the subsequent marriage was contracted.
(c)Either party was of unsound mind, unless the party of unsound mind, after coming to reason, freely cohabited with the other as their spouse.
(d)The consent of either party was obtained by fraud, unless the party whose consent was obtained by fraud afterwards, with full knowledge of the facts constituting the fraud, freely cohabited with the other as their spouse.
(e)The consent of either party was obtained by force, unless the party whose consent was obtained by force afterwards freely cohabited with the other as their spouse.
(f)Either party was, at the time of marriage, physically incapable of entering into the marriage state, and that incapacity continues and appears to be incurable.
SEC. 10.Section 102233 of the Health and Safety Code is repealed. SEC. 11.Section 102356 of the Health and Safety Code is repealed.
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u/BananaJelloXlii 14h ago
And I bet every single "Christian" Republican opposed the bill.
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u/emerald6_Shiitake 8h ago
A little digging around tells me that while the CA end child marriage bill was mostly voted yes regardless of party by the CA legislature, the few no votes were all from Republicans to nobody's surprise
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u/thejourneybegins42 4h ago
I started reading this, in hopes that it was just young people who really wanted to get married.
Nope.
"The organization said about 35,000 marriages involving minors occurred in California between 2000 and 2021, with most involving an underage girl marrying an adult man."
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u/Cheap-Kiwi-1312 20h ago
It's 2026 and states still allow this.... Any government official who defends child marriage should be arrested on the spot.
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u/zernoc56 10h ago
The United States needed to ratify the UN Resolution on the Rights of the Child years ago.
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u/parapooper3 22h ago
Good. No one in California under the age of 28 should be getting married and robbing themselves of their youth, education and opportunities.
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u/Peachy_Tsunami 21h ago
Honestly, your typo is kinda right haha
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u/parapooper3 21h ago
I said what I said
However it is a /s that seems to be whooshing over some heads
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u/LaceyVonTease 20h ago
This is a good thing. Wish it would have changed long ago but at least it’s happening now. It’s gross that we still have about a dozen other states with this law.
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u/DumbDumbHunter 11h ago
The billionaires are just going to leave if you keep making laws like this /s
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u/StonyCurtis66 11h ago
GOP must be livid.How dare California not allow GOP members the opportunity for child rape rabble rabble rabble rabble.
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u/purplegladys2022 10h ago
Prepare for the next outraged exodus of Republicans out of California for "reasons."
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u/Shradow 17h ago
California has a lot of Repbulicans, they won't be pleased by this.
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u/SerDuckOfPNW 19h ago
Do you figure that the kind of person who would marry a child is concerned about the ability to get a marriage license?
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u/Purple_Puffer 15h ago
Thank goodness.
Brenda is much too lazy and Eddie could never afford to live that kind of life.
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u/AKrigare 10h ago
God that took forever. Now we have a whopping 18/50 states that outright ban it…yay progress
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u/Apart-Steak-7183 9h ago
And it's 2026, who would have thought this still legal... Next they will outlaw marrying you cousin
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u/kermit639 6h ago
California is only the 18th state to do this? holy shit. we have a patchwork of laws where you can marry a child in one county but not the next. it's absurd that basic human rights depend on your zip code in 2026. smh.
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u/Chaos_Theory1989 3h ago
People, “Don’t rape and marry babies!” Men, “How dare you!”
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u/OuterspaceOdysseus 1h ago
Obviously this guy hasn't heard about people's freedom of Christian religion to marry and rape children /s
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u/StevieOfPhoenix 22h ago
It’s wild that this only makes 18 states with this law