1. Introduction
I once saw this one episode of a 1990s series called Picket Fences. A high-school girl who appeared regularly on that show became friends with what she believed to be a 16-year-old girl. To make a long story short, it came out that this so-called 16-year-old girl was pregnant, and others suspected that her middle-aged father had impregnated her.
The local authorities got involved and discovered that the young girl was really 18 years old and that the 40-something-year-old man pretending to be her father was really her husband. It turned out that he and his wife were concealing their marriage and their real relationship with each other from their neighbors so that the locals would not cause them problems.
When I first started out on the Steemit writing platform in 2017 and eventually moved over to the Hive writing platform, most of my articles were ones in which I warned the American people about passing laws that would abolish teenage marriage altogether in every state jurisdiction of our nation. Later on, I produced articles in which I questioned the American statutory-rape laws and how people were defining or rather misdefining pedophilia.
Recently a news story has come out of Tennessee in which an age-gap couple traveled from there to Alabama to get around the rigid marriage laws in their home state. There was one major problem. The Tennessee authorities zeroed in on them anyhow despite that they had successfully married each other. Now, there has been uproar in their Tennessee community on whether they have the right to be married or whether the husband should go to prison.
If you're wondering how old the husband and wife in this age-gap couple were when they tied the knot with each other not too long ago, the husband was 62 years of age and the wife was only 16 years of age. All right. I realize that this age difference between them is not going to get either one of them a starring role on the sitcom Fuller House, but I honestly feel that the Tennessee authorities are wasting the taxpayers' money persecuting this couple and their respective families.
The husband's name is Michael Dewayne Holley. The press and the media are not disclosing the underage wife's name. Social-justice warriors and radical feminists are throwing all sorts of bogus conspiracy theories regarding pedophilia in every direction. If their 15-year-old son were running around their neighborhood, getting every 12-year-old girl pregnant, they'd be defending him.
I'd like to remind all of these self-appointed psychiatrists, self-proclaimed child advocates, self-appointed pedo-experts, and the likes who have posted hateful comments about Mr. Holley on Facebook, Instagram, and other social-media platforms, that his wife was 16 years old rather than 6 years old when he married her. Therefore, he could never be diagnosed as a pedophile. Your insults about him in that regard are defamation of character at best.
2. The Concept Of Comity
I found out about the above-described controversial age-gap marriage from a video that Norman Michael Achin posted on his YouTube channel. You can watch that same video below.
Norman Michael Achin Describes How The Authorities Who Arrested Michael Dewayne Holley Are On A Witch Hunt
I agree with everything that Mr. Achin says about this same matter in his video above. The Tennessee authorities are clearly persecuting Mr. Holley. I could give you my take on this matter; but if you follow me regularly here on this same writing platform, then you likely already know what I would state in my article if I were to go down that road.
Because Mr. Holley is not a clone of John Stamos, you know that the criminal justice system is going to treat him like the dirt under their feet. John Stamos is also 62 years of age, and he still has his youthful features.
The elephant in the room here is whether Mr. Holley and his wife were domiciled in Alabama or Tennessee when they got married in Alabama. The Tennessee courts honor the concept of comity. However the problem here is that Mr. Holley and his wife were domiciled in Tennessee when they tied the knot with each other in Alabama, and, therefore, the prosecution is going to argue that the Tennessee courts don't have to honor the concept of comity in that event and that Mr. Holley sought to circumvent the marriage laws in Tennessee against underage marriage.
Now, don't get me wrong. If this couple wishes to invoke the concept of comity to defend the legality of the marriage at trial, I am all in favor of them doing so. I think it's ridiculous that state jurisdictions can find inventive ways of refusing to honor marriages that take place in other state jurisdictions of our nation.
I'm sure that Fraidy Reiss of Unchained At Last and Jeanne Smoot of the Tahirih Justice Center are going to stir up trouble for Mr. Holley and his wife. Both of these women need to get a life and stop meddling into other people's business. If someone wants their help, they'll ask them for it.
I agree with Mr. Achin that probably the Supreme Court of the United States ("SCOTUS") will grant review to this age-gap couple's marriage and look into whether the concept of comity does apply here. The minute that this couple realized that people in their community were talking about them, they should have gotten on the next one-way flight to Ecuador.
I don't believe that Ecuador has an extradition treaty with the United States for "statutory rape," but, hey, that's just my take on matters. At the end of the day, what I say doesn't matter but rather what the court says. At the same time, I cannot remain quiet about it.
I praise Mr. Achin's strong, salient point about irresponsible journalism. The news reporter could have asked the female cop difficult questions about the matter instead of sensationalizing the entire story.
3. The Potential Of A Persuasive Authority
There is no mandatory authority there in Tennessee that I know of that Michael Dewayne Holley could use in his defense at his criminal trial. However, there is a persuasive authority from the Commonwealth of Virginia that Mr. Holley's criminal defense lawyer might be able to use. It is called Taylor v. The Commonwealth.
The way that this case law works in the Commonwealth of Virginia is that if someone is charged with statutory rape and the alleged victim has wedding plans with that person, then they can request that the trial court continue the trial date again and again until the alleged victim reaches the statutory age of consent, which is 18 years old in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Once that happens and assuming that the defendant still wishes to marry his alleged victim, then the judge can vacate the criminal trial from the court docket altogether.
Once all of these events take place, then the criminal charges against the defendant are rescinded and he or she is free to go. Of course, he or she may have to appear one more time with the alleged victim and show to the court that they have legally married each other.
I'm not a lawyer; but I have researched this same case law, and it appears that it has never been overruled in the intervening eight decades that it has been on the Virginia law books. That's it. This case law came to fruition clear back in 1945.
Mr. Holley's lawyer may or may not be able to convince a Tennessee judge to allow them to use that same ruling in a Tennessee courtroom as a persuasive authority in defense of Mr. Holley. It's worth a shot, if Mr. Holley and his attorney are unable to get the criminal charges dismissed on the grounds of the concept of comity.
4. Final Thoughts
I completely get it. Michael Dewayne Holley and his current wife don't have the most conventional marriage ever, but it's their life and their business.
Mr. Holley never trafficked his wife. He never forcibly raped her. He never groomed her. He's not a pedophile according to the Fifth Edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ("DSM-5"). He is no threat to his wife, her parents, or society in general. He only wishes to live his life with his wife in peace. What part of that do these law-enforcement people and prosecutors not understand?
This scenario brings to mind a similar situation back in 2005 when a 22-year-old man (Matthew Koso) had taken his pregnant 14-year-old girlfriend (Crystal Guyer) down from Lincoln, Nebraska to Hiawatha, Kansas and tied the knot with her. Mr. Holley did the same thing, and he merely wishes to be with his wife and be free of governmental scrutiny to which he is currently being subjected.
The statutory-rape laws here in our nation already constitute a form of governmental overreach. How does it make any sense for these Tennessee law-enforcement officials and the likes to rake Mr. Holley, his wife, and her family over the coals? It causes me to question whether the United States has finally become a Fascist totalitarian police state. It certainly seems that way nowadays.
It's exactly as Norman Michael Achin stated in his video above. There's a war going on against sex, and our criminal justice system has been taking these witch hunts of theirs in that regard way too far.
Tennessee has crappy marriage laws. Their marriageable age floor is 17 years old. Some of you are probably wondering why Mr. Holley didn't wait another year to wed his current wife.
Well, here is the kicker. Mr. Holley could not have married his wife by waiting one more year there in Tennessee, because the law doesn't allow a 17-year-old girl or boy to wed anyone more than 4 years their senior. A 17-year-old minor has to get parental permission to do so, and he or she also has to get court approval as well.
When elected officials start putting age-differential restrictions on whom someone can legally marry, you know that our nation's freedoms are going down the toilet. Femi-Nazis and radical feminists somehow think that every man their age is their carnal property, and they push themselves at these men despite that these men have no interest in them. It soulds like desperation on their part to me rather than concern over what a teenage girl does with her life.
This article is copyright-protected.