Credit where it’s due, Oklahoma has joined Missouri as the lone red states drawing a hard line against child marriage. Meaning you have to be 18 to get married, no exceptions.
Was there objection? Yes. Oklahoma’s senate passed the measure unanimously, but the House passed it by only 51-36.
Did 100% of the opposition come from Republicans? Also yes.
But the Republican governor signed it into law, right? Um, no. Governor Stitt “declined to take a position on the measure.” Charming. I thought a governor had to sign a bill into law in all states, but apparently, at least in Oklahoma a law can still take effect if the governor merely wusses out.
I mentioned Missouri. Just last year, it became the first red state to remove all the parental or emancipation excuses and exceptions from an 18-year minimum. I suspect accumulated shame had a little to do with it. Check out this excerpt from a Kansas City Star report published over 2018-2019:
Missouri is a destination wedding spot — for 15-year-old brides
“A review of some 50,000 marriage licenses shows how Missouri’s lax law has for years turned the state into a destination wedding spot for 15-year-old child brides, often rushing to get married,” the Star reported. “Some traveled up to 1,800 miles to Missouri, from as far off as Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Florida.”
Numbers-wise, this is not a trivial matter. Unicef reports that more than 200,000 minors were married in the U.S. in 2000-2015. When I was growing up, Unicef was the organization that made the little boxes we’d put coins into in Sunday School, to help disadvantaged children overseas. Now they’re having to spend resources updating on the fight against American men marrying little girls. It’s humiliating.
Party Lines
Blue states don’t get out of this with clean hands. It’s also humiliating to know that until 2018, no state had a no-exceptions 18-year-old law. Delaware became the first that year.
That opened the flood gates in blue states, and now 15 have the same requirement. Nine states and the District of Columbia have cleared this bar just since 2023.
I wish this weren’t a partisan issue, but this map tells a lot of the story. The purple states have passed ironclad 18-year-old minimums. Blue is 17, green is 16, yellow is 15, red is no absolute minimum (thanks to exceptions). Yes, California needs to get with the program.
It would take too long to discuss the years and years of right-wing opposition to eliminating child marriage in various state legislatures. Maybe a more consise way to look at the problem is to forget the laws and look at ongoing behavior: the actual child marriage rates.
Unchained At Last researched the busiest child-marrying states over the first 20 years of this century:
- Nevada
- Idaho
- Utah
- Kentucky
- Wyoming
- West Virginia
- Alabama
- Mississippi
- Tennessee
- Texas
In electoral college terms, that represents a 97-0 Republican shutout.
There’s no polite way to wrap this up. Let’s hope Oklahoma will shift the momentum in other red states. However, up to this point in our history, it’s fair to say that right-wing political leadership may frequently oppose child trafficking, but they’re pretty cool with the idea of picking just one and settling down.