By KAYLA DEMICCO
Staff Writer
In June 2015, the United States Supreme Court ruled that same sex marriage would be legalized nationwide. However, since then, some states are going out of their way to make a separate bill in order to go against the Supreme Court.
In Tennessee, the Republicans are trying to pass a bill to repeal gay marriage. To the lawmakers in Tennessee, taking away marriage rights is the most important thing right now. To focus on taking away same sex marriage, they put off the process of trying to outlaw child marriage.
A 16 or 17 year old can get a marriage license in Tennessee with parental consent and anyone younger just simply needs a judge to sign off okaying the marriage. Apparently to Republicans, it’s more important to make sure it is illegal for someone who is gay to get married than a child.
The individual to blame for this mess is David Fowler, president of the Family Action Council Of Tennessee (a conservative, Christian based advocacy group). Fowler said that “the bill would interfere with his lawsuit against the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the court’s 2015 decision to legalize gay marriage.”
Child marriage became a concern back in 2001 when it was reported that three 10 year olds were married to men in their 30s. Two Democratic lawmakers have proposed bills to prevent marriages when someone is under eighteen years of age and again last year when statistics came out saying that in 2016, 42 men and 166 women under the age of eighteen in Tennessee were married in the state. Apparently, there is a loophole that people have been using that “allows a judge to waive the age requirement and does not state a minimum age”.
Republican and sponsors the ban on child marriage, Darren Jernigan, said that “What has happened is the Family Action Council wants to continue to let 13-year-olds get married in the state at the sake of their court case against same-sex couples”.
Metro Weekly speculates that if the Supreme Court didn’t make same sex marriage legal back in 2015, Tennessee lawmakers never would have even considered to allow it in their state. In fact, it has been in discussion to try to “defend natural marriage” since a few months after the legalization of same sex marriage.
After Fowler intervened, Republican lawmakers in the state sent the proposal to something called “summer study” in the House Civil Justice Subcommittee, which has been known to kill bills.
Recently, the State House has been considering the unnecessary hold on the ban on child marriage and might not put it back in the works until 2019. On top of that, last year, LGBTQNation.com stated that there was another bill being talked about to try to have public schools to “require that a student use student restroom and locker room facilities that are assigned for use by persons of the same sex as the sex indicated on the student’s original birth certificate” (aka “The Bathroom Bill”).
Only in Trump’s America is it deemed okay to ignore the real issues going on and allow children to get married to grown adults instead of letting two people of the same sex walk down the aisle.
