Gov. Christie caves to
Muslim practice of child marriage?
Tucker Carlson’s company The Daily
Caller, along with Politico and other news outlets, are reporting that
Republican Governor Chris Christie vetoed a bill Thursday that would have made
New Jersey the first state to outlaw marrying children under 18, citing the ban
interfered with religious freedoms.
The bill reportedly aimed to prohibit
any marriage of children under age 18.
Current state law requires a judge to
approve marriages of children 15 and younger, while 16- and 17-year-olds can
marry with parental consent.
Republican Assemblywoman Nancy Munoz
sponsored the bill that would have ended child marriage but Christie rejected
it, saying it conflicted with religious customs.
“An exclusion without exceptions would
violate the cultures and traditions of some communities in New Jersey based on
religious traditions,” Christie wrote in the veto message. “Judicial
oversight would permit consideration of these factors in the 16 and 17-year-old
timeframe.”
Flashback to 2011 when Christie
ridiculed Sharia Law for being impressed upon the U.S.: “This Sharia law
business is just crap … and I’m tired of dealing with the crazies.”
Philly.com reports that Christie
declared he instead wants marriages involving children under the age of 16 to
be banned, though he has suggested allowing 16 and 17-year-olds to marry with
the oversight of a judge. Christie also stated about given
state laws governing
sex and abortion, “it is disingenuous to hold that a 16-year-old may never
consent to marriage.
Activists report that underage marriage
is widespread across the nation, with approximately 170,000 children married
between 2000 and 2010 in 38 of the 50 states.
Unchained At Last, a non-profit group
that seeks to help women in arranged and forced marriages, estimates there have
been at least 3,600 marriages in New Jersey involving someone under the age of
18 between 1995 and 2015 and 166 of those involved children 15-years-old or
younger.
“The shocking truth is that child
marriage is legal right now in New Jersey, and it’s shocking that thousands of
children have been married here recently, most of them minor girls married to
adult men,” Fraidy Reiss, executive director of Unchained at Last, told Politico.
She added that if a girl being forced to
marry is honest with a judge, “she’s going to face really serious
repercussions” from her parents.
Reiss called Christie’s decision to
veto the act “shameful” and objected to his proposal to ban marriage for
children 15 and younger but not 16- and 17-year-olds, saying the “notion of
separating the two groups as though somehow it’s less terrible” for the older
teenagers. She argued that regardless of the age, whenever someone is forced
into marriage, they face the same challenges if they ever tried to leave or
seek the counsel of a lawyer.
From 1995 to 2015, more than 3,600
children New Jersey married, including 166 who were 15 or younger. The youngest
was 13, according to state health records.
Comments
If we
fail to ban Sharia, we should repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1965.
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
No comments:
Post a Comment