That bonkers Tennessee child marriage bill – myths & facts

You’ve probably heard that Tennessee legislators recently introduced a bonkers bill aimed at undermining same-sex marriage.

And you’ve probably heard that original version of the bill also – by mistake – would have eliminated the state’s minimum age for marriage. Oops.

That itty bitty mistake has been corrected, even while the bonkers bill remains pending. But we know you care about child marriage as much as we do, so here are some facts about the wackadoo Tennessee bill and some of the wild misconceptions about it.

INTENDED AS ANTI-GAY, NOT ANTI-CHILD

HB233/SB562, introduced by Rep. Tom Leatherwood and Sen. Janice Bowling, was intended to create an “alternative pathway” to marriage for heterosexual couples, to undermine the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges that legalized same-sex marriage.

But in their homophobic zeal, the lawmakers at first forgot to specify a minimum age for this “alternative pathway.” This would have allowed minors of any age, as young as zero, to be entered into marriage.

Again, this was an oversight and not the beginning of a wider, partisan effort to expand child marriage.

NOTHING SHOCKING ABOUT MARRIAGE AGE OF ZERO (UNFORTUNATELY)

What got lost in the resulting national outrage – DID YOU HEAR THAT TENNESSEE WANTS TO ELIMINATE ANY MINIMUM AGE FOR MARRIAGE??!! – is that nine other U.S. states do not specify a minimum age for marriage (see our map of minimum marriage age by state). Until just a few years ago, most states did not specify a minimum age for marriage; indeed, Tennessee did not specify a minimum age for marriage – 17 – until 2018.

In recent years, many states including Tennessee have passed legislation to set an effective marriage age of 16 or 17, in the mistaken belief that this is a huge improvement over their previous effective marriage age of zero (see our map of child marriage legislation by state). We at Unchained are quick to point out that an effective marriage below 18 is dangerous and unacceptable, and 16 or 17 is not actually a huge improvement over zero. Consider:

• Our recent study showed that 96 percent of the minors who marry in the U.S. are age 16 or 17. Moving the marriage age to 16 or 17 helps only approximately 4 percent of those it is intended to help, and it fails to protect those most at risk of child marriage.
• Even at 16 or 17, even the most mature teen does not have the legal rights of adulthood to help them navigate a contract such as marriage, nor do they have the legal capacity to escape the marriage if it turns bad. They face overwhelming legal and practical barriers if they try to leave home, enter a domestic violence shelter, retain an attorney or bring a legal action – including a divorce. Marriage at any age before 18 creates a nightmarish legal trap.
• Marriage before 18, even at 16 or 17, is a human rights abuse, according to the U.S. State Department. It destroys American girls’ health, education, economic opportunities and even their physical safety.

In other words, Tennessee’s mistakenly introducing a bill to move the effective marriage age from 17 back to zero was no more horrifying than Tennessee’s currently allowing 17-year-olds to be subjected to and trapped in a human rights abuse.

And we are equally horrified about the 43 other U.S. states, in addition to Tennessee, that still allow minors to be entered into marriage before age 18.

THE BIGGER PROBLEM

After a massive public outcry, the Tennessee bill sponsors amended their bill to specify that both parties must be 18 to marry under the “alternative pathway.” The bill is no longer accidentally anti-child, though it remains deliberately anti-gay.

And the public outcry should be focused on this fact: Child marriage is still legal in 44 U.S. states. The Tennessee bonkers bill proved the power of public outrage – so please join us in focusing that outrage on insisting legislators in Tennessee and EVERY U.S. STATE set a marriage age of #18NoExceptions.