If you have been a loyal follower of mine since the time that I first became a Hiver, then you have to know that I have been sharply opposed to our elected officials passing laws to forbid teenagers from getting married before they become legally old enough to vote. The Commonwealth of Virginia is a disgraceful jurisdiction that has scrapped the rights of teenage minors to enter into matrimony to make their loving relationships all legal since 2016.
Jill Holtzman Vogel was at the center of that movement in her capacity as an elected state official. If you want to know more about her, here is a whole host of articles about her. Their titles are "Jill Holtzman Vogel Is Wrong for Virginia," "Jill Holtzman Vogel Is Ruining Virginia," "Did Justin Fairfax Save Virginia From Jill Holtzman Vogel?," "Jill Holtzman Vogel’s Defeat Was Virginia’s Victory," and "It’s 2019! Jill Holtzman Vogel Must Go!"
After all the problems that Ms. Vogel caused with her war against teenage marriage, she finally decided not to run for reelection; and the Commonwealth of Virginia was rid of her political presence on January 10, 2024. At that point in time, 16- and 17-year-old minors could still get married provided that they were able to get legally emancipated from their parents. Minors younger than that had to travel to other state jurisdictions to wed, and they had to live there too.
Everyone who opposed any efforts to outlaw teenage marriage was happy to see Ms. Vogel leave office. It was way too good to be true.
Most outrageously, on the exact same day that Ms. Vogel left office, a group of three Democrats (State House Delegates Karen Keys-Gamarra, Nadarius Clark, and Rozia Henson) introduced a bill that would disallow anyone under 18 years of age to get married under any circumstances in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Hmmm. I wonder if these three delegates were in regular contact with Ms. Vogel regarding this matter. The irony of it all is that Ms. Vogel was a Republican.
The difference between early 2024 and 2016 regarding this matter was that the efforts of these three Democrats to outlaw any forms of underage marriage in the Commonwealth of Virginia didn't get as much attention from the press and the media as Ms. Vogel and her political co-conspirators did back in 2016 when they were tampering with the marriage laws in this same jurisdiction.
It only gets worse. The Commonwealth of Virginia's comity only extends to underage couples who got married in another state before they became domiciled in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
1. Virginia Not For Lovers Or Marriage
Upon recently discovering this change in the marriage laws in this same state jurisdiction, I surfed around on YouTube to see if there were any videos about it. All I could find was a video of this one bimbo smiling and celebrating this bill's passage into law. The video is below.
Amie Knowles Gives An Intellectually Bankrupt Narrative About How New Virginia Law Outlaws "Child Marriage" As Of July 1st, 2024
Duhhh, Amie Knowles. Medical science defines a child as a boy or girl before puberty. Therefore, child marriage has never been legal in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Before 2016, a girl had to be pregnant to get married if she was under 16 years of age. You're talking about teenage marriage with the exception of 18- and 19-year-olds.
This woman in the video above has an annoying voice, and she treats what is really a tragedy like something to be celebrated. Well, Ms. Know-It-All-Knowles. Because of this confounded new law, the number of statutory-rape convictions are going to increase; and because more men will be going to prison than before, your taxes are going up. Are you happy about that?
I guess you like the idea that adult women have more control over adult men and underage boys than they did before. Also, you're someone who obviously has no problem with the notion of your state jurisdiction becoming another Fascist totalitarian police state.
Ms. Knowles? Why do you brag that the Commonwealth of Virginia is the first state in the South to ban "child marriage"? Are you in the Confederate closet or something? Your state is eliminating most of its Confederate history and landmarks little by little. I can understand you being proud of your heritage, but this new marriage law is nothing for anyone to be proud of. It's a miscarriage of justice.
What really irks me about this change in the law is that I cannot believe that Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin would be dense-headed enough to sign this bill into law only three months after it was first introduced. Forty Republican Virginia State House Delegates opposed this same bill. I would think that Virginia Governor Youngkin would have taken that fact alone as a signal to veto the bill. After all, he is a Republican himself. Chris Christie (a Republican) did it when he was the governor of New Jersey.
Nevertheless, Governor Youngkin did, in fact, sign this same bill into law, and, therefore, I'll never vote for him if he runs for president of the United States. If he doesn't care about the rights of teenagers who wish to marry before the age of 18, then he won't care about the rights of every American in the event that he decides to make a bid for the White House.
I have to question whether the Virginia Democrats received any bribe money from the prison-industrial complex. I mean, this change in the law is going to cause more young men to go to prison on frivolous and malicious statutory-rape convictions than before. It'll be cheap labor for the prison-industrial complex.
Now, before any of you go posting a bunch of comments about how the statutory-rape laws exist to protect the safety and interests of teenage minors, stop typing. Instead, I ask that you read the online publication titled The Paradox of Statutory Rape by Russell L. Christopher and Kathryn Hope Christopher from beginning to end. You will be shocked at how unfairly the laws pertaining to the statutory ages of consent are worded in each state throughout our nation.
It wouldn't be the first time that any elected officials have accepted bribes from some large financial institution. Fifty-one Democratic Delegates in Richmond, Virginia voted in favor of this same bill to outlaw 16- and 17-year-olds from getting married in this same state jurisdiction. Quite honestly, I don't believe that these elected officials have any teenager's best interests at heart. I will never vote for a Democrat again for as long as I live. I don't trust any of them anymore.
Conspiracy theorist organizations like FREEDOMUNITED, Unchained At Last, and the Tahirih Justice Center will provide sob stories from women whose marriages went sour shortly after they wedded before the age of 18. For example, a Brigitte Combs gave a sob story about how her life deteriorated after she got married at the age of 17 and then divorced at the age of 20. However, there is another side to the issue.
In an online publication titled SIXTEEN CANDLES ON MY WEDDING CAKE: IMPLICATIONS OF BANNING CHILD MARRIAGE IN AMERICA by Marie Johnson-Dahl, Ms. Dahl stated that:
. . . Maria Vargas . . . at sixteen, married her twenty-five-year-old boyfriend. Though Maria’s mother begged her to reconsider, she reluctantly drove Maria and her boyfriend to West Virginia, where a minor may marry at age sixteen with the written consent of a parent. Despite their community’s condemnation of the relationship, Maria and her husband love one another, and he is a committed father-figure to her child. As a teen mom, Maria is reliant on him for the familial structure and financial support she desires. She believed that marriage “was her decision . . . and not her mother’s.”
Ms. Johnson-Dahl is from the school of thought that if you have cancer in your liver, then your doctor should cut away the parts of it that have the cancer rather than remove the entire liver. In other words, she is opposed to the efforts of elected officials to ban teenage marriage in the United States altogether. You can read her online publication.
I don't completely agree with everything Ms. Johnson-Dahl states therein, but I do like her style in approaching this issue. As she states therein, elected officials are failing to research both sides of this issue.
Unlike Ms. Johnson-Dahl, I don't think it is right that elected officials impose provisions in the marriage laws that restrict the age difference between a minor and that minor's spouse. She appears to be skeptical that a teenage minor can enter into a marriage with a man over forty without there being coercion involved. However, there was a 14-year-old girl in Ohio and another 14-year-old girl in Alabama who each married a man in his forties, and neither one of them regretted it.
I mean, every man over 40 years old who falls in love with a teenage girl is not the next Brian David Mitchell, Ariel Castro, or Phillip Garrido, for pete sakes. Some of them actually do have honorable intentions for these young girls. Society and the law are not always right about these men.
Not too long ago an Idaho man in his forties got acquitted by jury nullification for statutory-rape charges that stemmed from an intimate relationship he had with a 17-year-old girl. The reason that the jurors in that trial acquitted him was likely because the young girl didn't want him to go to prison and she was probably in love with him. I know that it's difficult for some people to believe that, but it does happen.
So many years ago, I was watching a daytime television talk show, and on the panel was a 40-something-year-old man with his 16-year-old wife. No, he was not a Mormon or a Muslim. He was your everyday American, and he was wearing a suit and tie; and he looked educated. His wife was crying because she wanted to have a baby in her teens. He wasn't keen about the idea, so nobody can say that he wasn't looking out for her best interests.
This same man probably spent most of his teenage years studying instead of dating, and his twenties were not much different. Nostalgia likely drew him into the arms of this young girl. In other words, she was like the belated teenage girlfriend that he never had before he met her.
I don't remember who the talk show host was. I vaguely remember that it might have been Maury Povich, but don't hold me to it.
I believe that Ms. Johnson-Dahl's attitude about teenage girls marrying middle-aged men stems from the misconception and preconceived notions in our society that older men are to blame for all of the teenage girls' problems, even though teenage boys are the ones who normally victimize teenage girls. Teenage boys have the most access to female teenage minors.
It bewilders me why there is such a concerted effort in the United States to segregate adult men from teenage girls who are significantly younger than them in any sort of romance, whereas these same people who promote this bias and discrimination don't seem to have any problem with 15-year-old boys being locked up with adult prisoners who are violent career criminals. Don't they know that these hardened criminals rape these young boys behind bars?
There are elected officials who do everything to keep a 24-year-old man from ever marrying a 14-year-old girl. On the other hand, a young boy forcibly raped the late Aubreigh Wyatt when she was only 12 years old, and this boy was the same age as her. The police investigated the crime, but they have not arrested this boy to this very day. Talk about twisted priorities.
In case you're not familiar with the matter of the late Aubreigh Wyatt, below is a video that provides you with the full heads-up about it. You'll find it concerning how apathetic the local authorities in Ocean Springs, Mississippi were after this young girl's rape was reported.
The Late Aubreigh Wyatt Was A Victim Of Bully-Cide For A Lack Of A Better Term
Ms. Johnson-Dahl doesn't appear to believe in the doctrine of comity whenever it comes to adolescent minors getting married. There is where she and I part ways in our respective opinions.
Nonetheless, Ms. Johnson-Dahl provides a compelling conclusion to her online publication regarding teenage marriage. Therein she posts:
For the past 200 years, minors have been able to marry if they meet the requirements of their state statutes. Many states have recently been pushing to eliminate this right by raising the minimum marriage age to eighteen. Organizations and legislators have been actively campaigning to close the loophole in every state, revoking a right to which minors were previously entitled. These efforts are heavily focused on preventing forced and coerced marriages of minors to much older men—especially when the minor is impregnated as a result of sexual assault. This movement is also grounded in concerns for the health, wellbeing, and educational attainment of minor girls.
But this reform is problematic in that it is also premised on the notion that minors lack decision-making capacity. This very rhetoric has been employed by the Republican Party in limiting minors’ access to abortion and contraceptive services through the use of parental consent and notification requirements. It also coincides with arguments that minors should not be able to make medical decisions for themselves. Specifically, minors cannot receive vaccinations and often cannot receive medical treatment in the absence of parental consent. Medical professionals also face obstacles in supplying blood transfusions to minors over the religious objections of their parents. The argument that minors are incapable of deciding whether to marry could have gross implications for how the law and society view the capacity of minors in these other contexts. Those pushing to place an outright ban on marriage of minors in all contexts are steadfastly focused on the mores of early marriage but fail to consider the unintended consequences of their efforts.
It is unclear whether minors could succeed on a claim that this legislation violates their fundamental right to marry or their religious liberties. The Supreme Court could analyze a law restricting the rights of minors to marry under strict scrutiny given its position on the right to marry in cases such as Loving and Obergefell. But the Supreme Court could also find that the right of minors to marry is not included in the fundamental right to marry. If the court were to analyze this right under strict scrutiny, these new statutes could be unconstitutional. It is unlikely that minors would be able to claim these laws infringe on their religious liberty, as these statutes do not target religion in general or any particular religious group.
Nonetheless, an outright ban on the marriage of minors is wrong on social and policy grounds. Revoking this right previously granted to minors sends a strong message that the states do not believe minors are autonomous agents capable of making important decisions. The rhetoric surrounding these new laws disempowers minors and fails to acknowledge the bodily autonomy and decision-making capacity of adolescents. Though those advocating for an outright ban on the marriage of minors are seeking to promote the health, safety, and wellbeing of young women, it is crucial that they consider how these efforts could, counterintuitively, pave the way for denial of minors’ rights in other contexts in which their voices are already being suppressed. Legislators should consider how actions often have unintended, harmful consequences. States should instead focus on the particular needs of their constituents and implement appropriate safeguards to protect minors from coercion while still acknowledging the rights and autonomy of minors. To fail to acknowledge the decision-making capacity and bodily autonomy of minors is to embark down a dangerous road.
Although I don't agree with Ms. Johnson-Dahl on every point she makes therein, I do have to commend her that she does thoroughly show both sides of the argument for this issue regarding teenage marriage. If anyone could get these new laws in a number of state jurisdictions imposing blanket bans on teenage marriage repealed, she could.
In contrary to the opinions of any of these Democrats who voted to change the marriage laws in the Commonwealth of Virginia to prohibit any minor from getting married under any circumstances, their state jurisdiction is not an exemplary one. In fact, their state jurisdiction is the most corrupt one in the Union, and elected officials are always giving police officers additional power and authority to oppress its residents. How is this new marriage law any different?
2. The Doctrine Of Comity And Taylor Vs. The Commonwealth Of Virginia
Elected officials like Karen Keys-Gamarra, Nadarius Clark, and Rozia Henson, just to name a few, don't care about the welfare of minors in the Commonwealth of Virginia. If a deadly strain of enterovirus were to wipe out all the small children in the world, they couldn't care less about it, unless, of course, it harmed a child in their families.
If they really wanted to do justice for the people of the Commonwealth of Virginia, they could have placed their agenda to make all underage marriage illegal in their state jurisdiction on a November ballot and allowed the residents of their state jurisdiction to vote on whether they wanted for their marriage laws to be changed in that manner.
There was an obvious lack of transparency on the part of these same elected officials as well. My response to their actions is that you only get what you vote for instead of a legislator who really takes concern of the wants and needs of their constituents.
Luckily, in the case of Maria Vargas that I described further back herein, she and her current husband, Phil Manning, were living in Pennsylvania when they decided to travel to West Virginia so that they could legally get married to each other. Pennsylvania honors the doctrine of comity to the extent that it allowed them to circumvent the marriage laws in their state jurisdiction that would have prohibited them from getting married, by traveling to West Virginia to do so. This matrimony took place in 2018.
If they had been living in the Commonwealth of Virginia and were domiciled there when they got married in West Virginia, their marriage would have been null and void under Virginia law. Back in 2016, Jill Holtzman Vogel in her capacity as an elected official attempted to get the Governor of Virginia to criminalize such actions, but he obviously would not go along with it.
The change in their state marriage laws back then merely allowed for the authorities to refuse to recognize an out-of-state marriage as legal unless, of course, the underage couple or semi-underage couple got married elsewhere before they became domiciled in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Now, if Maria and Phil were residents of the Commonwealth of Virginia and they had decided to get married in West Virginia back when Maria was 16 years old and they decided to stay there with a relative until they could be domiciled in West Virginia, it would not have guaranteed that their marriage would have been legally recognized upon their return to the Commonwealth of Virginia.
The reason that the Commonwealth of Virginia has set up their marriage laws this way is to prevent their residents from circumventing the age restrictions in them. My response to their actions is that their doctrine of comity should not have any restrictive terms and conditions in them. If a couple wants to get married, their marriage should be recognized everywhere in our nation despite that each of them are on opposite sides of the legal age line.
Now, if Maria and Phil had gotten married in West Virginia back when Maria was 16 years old and had lived in West Virginia long enough to become residents there, their return to the Commonwealth of Virginia would not have guaranteed that the authorities would not have meddled into their lives.
Yes, the Virginia authorities would have no right to arrest Phil for any sexual intercourse that took place between him and Maria in West Virginia. However, he could still be subject to arrest in the Commonwealth of Virginia for statutory rape or the likes, unless he were able to prove that he and Maria were West Virginia residents when they got married in West Virginia.
The elephant in the room here is that none of this is as black and white as it should be, and it only gets crazier and crazier as the situation unfolds. If Phil had been arrested for statutory rape after he and Maria were to return to the Commonwealth of Virginia for any sexual contact they had in this same state jurisdiction, his criminal defense attorney could invoke the 1945 ruling of Taylor vs. the Commonwealth of Virginia in his defense.
To the best of my knowledge, the Virginia Supreme Court has not overruled Taylor vs. The Commonwealth of Virginia in the intervening eight decades since the time that it was first decided back in the same year that the United States and our allies had defeated Adolf Hitler. That is not to say that it could not be overruled in the near future. In any event, I'm going to provide a ballpark example in which Phil had to rely on this same ruling for his defense against a statutory-rape charge.
What would happen in that same event is that the criminal defense attorney would only have to ensure that Phil got bailed out of jail. Then he would never see the inside of another jail again, and the judge would continue his criminal trial again and again until Maria turned 18. Then the judge would dismiss the criminal charges against Phil altogether.
The difficulty of Phil going down this same road would be that he and Maria would not be allowed to have sexual intercourse with each other in the interim. I'm sure that the judge would allow Phil to be in contact with Maria for the purpose of caring for their baby.
Phil would be prohibited from leaving the state jurisdiction while he was out on bail. It would still be a very unpleasant situation for all involved, but at least it would keep Phil out of jail and away from prison.
Then comes the possibility that Phil and Maria would have to get married to each other a second time this time in the Commonwealth of Virginia so that their marriage would be legally recognized in that same state jurisdiction. I may not be a lawyer, but I understand enough about the law to know that this still would be a messed-up and complicated situation for Phil and Maria.
Somebody needs to challenge this new marriage law in the Supreme Court of Virginia and seek to get it struck down. It's not really benefitting anyone, even though self-proclaimed child advocates will embellish it to be something that it is not.
3. The Repercussions Of The New Marriage Law In The Commonwealth Of Virginia
We also have to consider the fact that there is going to be a spike in frivolous and malicious statutory-rape convictions in the Commonwealth of Virginia as a result of this new marriage law there. Prison never serves as a deterrent to two people falling in love with each other and consummating their relationship. It only brings about tragedy for them once they realize that they cannot easily make their relationship legal in the event that both parties each happen to be on opposite sides of the legal age line.
The most common scenario in that event when the underage girl is pregnant is that her adult boyfriend needlessly goes to prison on a frivolous and malicious statutory-rape conviction. She may have to apply for social welfare benefits, because she won't have her baby's father bringing in a regular income and her parents may not be able to afford the extra mouth to feed.
When finances get tight for the underage mother, social-services agencies have a bad habit of zeroing in on that young girl and taking her baby away from her. Then there remains the possibility that the young girl and her baby's father may never see that child ever again. It all continues to go downhill from that point on. Everybody needlessly suffers including the baby.
It wasn't that long ago that a man barely in his twenties was attacked in an Alabama correctional facility and gang-raped and murdered. This man was a father. He was about to get out of prison when this atrocity took place. The authorities did nothing about it.
Now, I am all for the rights of the LGBTQ community here in the United States, but, at the same time, I must be brutally honest about issues surrounding these same minorities throughout our nation. How do you think that the children of the above-described Alabama man are going to feel about homosexuals once they grow up? They'll likely become gay bashers, and innocent people are going to die needlessly because of their sexual orientation.
The irony here is that prison rapists are usually only "gay for the stay." Once they get released from prison, many of them go back to their wives and families and resume their lives as though nothing ever happened during their imprisonment. However, it is openly gay people who suffer the consequences of these monsters' actions behind bars in the long run.
Sooner or later the Commonwealth of Virginia is going to experience a rapid increase in gay-bashing incidents. This same tragedy is going to cause the quality of life in this same state jurisdiction to go downhill insofar as people will be leaving it to get away from these horrors.
I understand that Rozia Henson is openly gay. I do not understand how he could have overlooked this same above-described tragic possibility when he pushed for Governor Glenn Youngkin to outlaw any minor from getting married in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Then there is the issue of police-civilian relations throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia. The major problem in this state jurisdiction is that while judges are very harsh on defendants who get caught having even the most consensual of sexual relations with a teenage minor, these same judges have a propensity to give police officers slaps on the wrist for sexually molesting toddlers.
A Virginia judge will give a 19-year-old man a ridiculous amount of prison time for having harmless sex with a 15-year-old girl only once. On the other hand, if a police officer has to appear before a judge inasmuch as he sexually penetrated a 3-year-old girl in every orifice of her body, the judge might only sentence him to six months of community service or something equally as lenient and ridiculously as insulting to the victim and her family.
The criminal justice system in the Commonwealth of Virginia reeks of hypocrisy. Civilians who go through the whole nine yards of being convicted of a harmless sexual offense involving a teenage minor get paraded on the evening news, serve time in prison, and get stuck on the sex-offender registry for an eternity afterwards are going to resent this new marriage law for standing in the way of making their relationship with a teenage minor all good legally.
Not too long thereafter, Virginia residents are going to come across more and more stories about cop killers in their state. People in this state jurisdiction are going to lose respect for the law insofar as they may become violent with police officers. I'm not saying that this will only happen in the Commonwealth of Virginia, but also in state jurisdictions that have taken their marriage laws in the same direction as those in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
It wasn't too long ago that I had seen a documentary about a motorist who got into a fight with a police officer and nearly beat the man to death. When I was a little kid, almost everyone respected the police, even people who didn't trust them. Nowadays you see stories on the news about cops ending up in the hospital or even the morgue after they get involved in a family matter that they really should leave alone.
It is outrageous enough that there are young adult men over 21 years of age in our nation going to prison for committing actions that would be completely legal and accepted by society if they were 15 years old. The above-described Democrats involved in changing the marriage laws in the Commonwealth of Virginia did not take the opinions of any of their dissenting constituents into account, and now things are about to get ugly throughout this same state jurisdiction.
I have personally tried to enlighten these same opponents of teenage marriage, and they do not listen to anything anyone tells them if that person disagrees with them. These self-righteous do-gooders are very stubborn, opinionated, and even combative in their responses. They are the same people who have converted pedophilia from a psychiatric disorder to a fictitious conspiracy theory. They're not playing with a full deck.
4. The Million-Dollar Question About Adult Men's Gravitation Toward Teenage Girls
Some of you may wish to ask the million-dollar question. That is, if these adult men are confronting a whole host of legal problems because of their intimate involvement with teenage minors in view of a number of state jurisdictions outlawing underage marriage, why don't these men find women their own age instead? I'm glad that you're asking this same question, because I definitely have an answer for it, even though it may not be the one that you want.
It can be no mystery that the single adult dating scene is not offering single men promising results in their search for eligible adult bachelorettes. You only have to watch the video below to understand what is causing adult men to gravitate away from women their own age and toward teenage girls who are not yet legally old enough to vote here in the United States.
Finding The Love Of Their Life Has Become An American Pipe Dream For Single Adult Men
Adult women who shame adult men here in the United States for not getting married and fathering children are simply not grounded in reality. As YouTuber Dapper Dev conveyed in his video above, the unstable economy and unpredictable political situation make it unconducive for adult men to find love and start a family. What part of that do adult women not get?
When women get married, society does not expect them to be the breadwinner; and hypergamy always goes in their favor. Therefore, it's fairly easy for a woman to find love and get married and have kids here in the so-called land of milk and honey. Everything is to her benefit in that event. When a man tries to do the same, he goes up against all odds instead.
Now, if adult women in our nation have to be so hateful toward adult men who never got the wife, the house with the white picket fence, and the 2.2. kids, how can they complain about adult men seeking out relationships with teenage girls in high school and even middle school? They cannot complain about something that they are causing.
There is even a Latin proverb that states that one should not complain about a problem, when the fault is their own. Well, adult women of America. This is where you have brought us all, so deal with it.
Teenage girls don't have as high expectations from adult men as adult women do. And don't anybody bring up the subject of pedophilia. Adult men dating teenage schoolgirls has nothing to do with pedophilia or child molestation. That argument is so lame.
Outlawing these same men from marrying a teenage girl younger than 18 years old is not going to turn our nation into a better society. It is only going to escalate the amount of violence and poverty in our nation.
Furthermore, the ban against teenage marriage in various state jurisdictions could explain the dramatic decline in child births and the noticeable decrease in marriages. I question why nobody ever seems to point this one possibility out.
As Marie Johnson-Dahl stated in her above-cited online publication, teenagers younger than 18 have been getting married for over 200 years. Why should their rights to do so be stripped from them now? To do so is mostly a self-serving agenda on the part of the Democrats.
5. Final Thoughts
The United States has become such a prison-loving society that it's not even funny. Radical feminists and pseudo-feminists are making a mess out of our nation as they abuse their authority in positions of power. Why does it even surprise any of us that the Democrats are pushing their agenda to impose a blanket ban against underage marriage everywhere in the United States?
The Democrats have been notorious for always backing up these femi-Nazi witches. Nobody should expect them to do what is right or what is fair. They all need to be voted out of office alongside the Republicans who stand behind them in their mission to sabotage the institution of marriage.
Now is the time more than ever that we American men need to be acquitting defendants in frivolous and malicious statutory-rape trials on jury nullification whenever we get summoned to serve on a jury for such matters. Let's start voting elected officials out of office who shove their policies down our throats against teenage marriage. They're not helping our country.
Some of you bright legal minds out there need to challenge these blanket bans on teenage marriage in the supreme courts of your respective state jurisdictions throughout the United States. It takes a long time to get these laws repealed. However, supreme court justices in your state jurisdiction can strike these laws down if they violate their state constitution.
Should anyone turn to the Supreme Court of the United States ("SCOTUS") to seek a ruling against these draconian marriage laws? I don't have much faith in the SCOTUS. However, we should not rule any avenue out that could produce the results we want.
These blanket bans against teenage marriage cannot last forever. Too many people oppose them. I agree with the majority of you that no little girl should be getting married at 7 years old, and allowing her to marry a 71-year-old man is absolutely appalling. However, if a 16-year-old girl wants to marry her 23-year-old boyfriend, it should be up to her, her boyfriend, her parents, and the courts.
Elected officials like Karen Keyes-Gamarra need to butt out of these young people's business and find something more constructive to do. Ms. Keyes-Gamarra is a family law attorney, and she considers herself to be a child advocate. However, has she ever fought to end parental testamentary freedom in the Commonwealth of Virginia or anywhere? Probably not. Therefore, she has no right to call herself a child advocate. She merely wants to be a busybody in the lives of teenage brides.
Ms. Gamarra and her two colleagues (Nadarius Clark and Rozia Henson) could have provided something in return upon pushing this marriage bill. For example, they could have added a provision in it that would have changed "statutory rape" from a strict-liability offense to an intent offense.
In that event, a prosecutor would have the burden of proving mens rea and actus rea and that there was a causal connection between the two before a statutory-rape conviction could be had. Also, make it a requirement that the prosecution has to prove that the alleged victim was harmed from the sexual intercourse. Also, give the alleged victim the right to opt out of having to testify.
The problem is that American society has become such a puritanical black hole that nobody in power wants to do anything sensible in changing our sex laws. As I have stressed previously, we have become a prison-loving culture.
The American statutory-rape laws themselves have become like a 9-millimeter semi-automatic handgun that parents and prosecutors don't wish to forfeit. The word "rape" in the offense of statutory rape sets alarms off in people's head, even though statutory rape is nothing more than a legal construct rather than an actual act of sexual brutality and violence.
Ms. Gamarra is so not cool, to say the least about her. She needs to be voted out of office alongside other cohorts of hers that support the same anti-marriage policies that she does. Virginians need to take their state back, period. Governor Glenn Youngkin is now in the doghouse.
This rhetoric from self-appointed psychiatrists and self-appointed child advocates about a teenager's brain not being developed until they get to be 25 years of age is a load of crap. This same piece of junk science has been debunked enough times for the American people to reject it as fact.
When a man over 18 years old marries a teenage girl younger than that, it is not legalized pedophilia. It is not state-sanctioned child molestation. It is about two people who each happen to be on opposite sides of the legal age line, and they want their love for each other to be recognized under the law.
Keeping teenage marriage legal here in the United States is a way of separating the good apples from the bad apples. I'm well aware that bad apples can slip under the radar. However, why should everyone suffer for the actions of only a few? If teenage marriage can work among the Irish Travellers, then it can work in the American culture and has worked.
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