Repealing Child Marriage, North Carolina Style

By DON ROLLINS

“It pains me knowing that North Carolina is tied with Alaska for having the lowest age for marriage in the United States. This legislation will protect so many vulnerable children who are forced into marriages and subjected to the negative personal and societal repercussions that follow suit.” — State Sen. Vickie Sawyer (R-N.C.)

While the longest American shooting war continues half a world away, one of its longest moral wars may be as close as a Carolina marriage bureau.

For as long as many states have been part of the Union, the form of human trafficking known as child marriage has been legally sanctioned. Most common in the South, this war has for generations been waged against overwhelmingly poor, black and brown, age 14 and-under females — a practice that at its worst is used to shield much older men charged with sex crimes against their brides-to-be.

Fortunately, the list of states enabling such abuse has steadily winnowed, leaving only Alaska and North Carolina with statutes with a threshold of age 14. In the case of North Carolina, bills from both houses would raise that bar from the lowest to that of the highest in the nation, 18.

Although two decades behind the pack, North Carolina reached critical mass after child advocacy groups and a human trafficking commission presented the outcomes of longitudinal studies, including both forced and unforced child marriages. The findings were sobering, listing increased likelihood of: severe sexually transmitted diseases; chronic domestic abuse; clinical depression, anxiety and substance misuse; poverty and; complicated pregnancies.

Taken together with separate studies on child brain development, there are data aplenty to support raising the age. Yet, impactful as the research may have been on the legislature’s actions, the situation has become an allout optics nightmare: North Carolina is the last continental US sponsor of child marriage — a bipartisan hot mess just 16 months away from the next election cycle.

There’s no telling the suffering incurred by North Carolina’s delay, and any shame past elected officials endure is patently deserved. In turn, we can be at least relieved the state sponsored sexism and inhumanity of child marriage appears to be on the way out. If so, it’ll be a glad if sorely delayed day.

Ironic Addendum: The minimum age of marriage in Afghanistan is 15 years-of-age, and requires the blessing of a father or judge. Otherwise it’s 16.

Don Rollins is a Unitarian Universalist minister living in Hendersonville, N.C. Email donaldlrollins@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, March 1, 2021

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