Politics Please say rock bottom is getting close

Wyoming Limiting Child Marriage Sparks Republican Outrage

The Wyoming Republican Party is seeking to kill a bill working its way through the state Legislature proposing to raise the state's legal marriage age to 16, arguing that putting "arbitrary" limits on child marriage interferes with parental rights and religious liberty.

The bill—which already passed the Republican-controlled Wyoming House of Representatives on a 36-25 vote late last month—proposes banning state residents from marrying anyone under the age of 16, while requiring anyone under the age of 18 seeking to get married to receive written consent from their parents under the eye of a competent witness.

The debate has been a longstanding one in Wyoming.

Currently, Wyoming is one of just eight states in the country—including California, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Washington and West Virginia—without a minimum age requirement for marriage, and it currently ranks among the top ten states in the country for child marriages, according to a 2021 study by advocacy group Unchained at Last.

Efforts to raise the age of marriage in the state have consistently stalled. For years, now-retired Laramie Democratic Representative Charles Pelkey sponsored legislation to raise the age of marriage to 18, only to fail with every effort.

It's also a common practice across the country, even now: While the number of child marriages nationally has been in steady free fall over the last few decades, just seven states to date have voted to ban it entirely, even as countries like the Philippines passed national laws banning the practice.

Other states, like Tennessee, have actually sought to go in the opposite direction, with Republicans there seeking last year to eliminate any limits on marriage entirely until public outrage forced them to reverse course.

https://www.newsweek.com/wyoming-ending-child-marriage-sparks-republican-outrage-1780501

 

Witnesses who testified in front of the Georgia grand jury investigating Trump 'may have lied under oath,' judge says

https://www.businessinsider.com/wit...rand-jury-investigating-trump-georgia-2023-2#

 

Witnesses for Trump? Or against him?

 

Marjorie Taylor Greene mocked for gushing over ‘anti-woke’ Super Bowl country star - not realising he’s a BLM activist

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...rjorie-taylor-greene-super-bowl-b2281242.html