Republican Groomers Kill Bill To Ban Child Marriages

Republicans in control of the West Virginia senate killed a bill this week that would have finally banned child marriage in the state. Under current law that Republicans apparently think is perfectly fine, children of ANY AGE can get legally married, with those younger than 16 simply having to get a waiver from a court to get married. The bill that is now dead would have prohibited this completely, and Republicans were not ok with that. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins discusses this.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

The Republicans in control of the West Virginia Senate voted down a ban on child marriage this week. The political party that loves to attack all of their opponents as groomers, the political party that loves to tell us they are protecting children, had the opportunity this week in West Virginia to protect children from child marriage and instead said, nah, it's kind of a tradition here in West Virginia. And I'm not saying that as an attack on West Virginians, that that's, that's actually what they said. So under current law, which is now going to be the only law, since they're not gonna revise it in West Virginia, if you are 16 years of age, you can legally get married as long as your parents say that's cool. But if you're under 16, you have to get permission not from your parents, from a judge. And if the judge says yes, then hey, guess what?

12 year old go buy a wedding dress, you're gonna walk down the aisle. Cuz the judge said, yeah, that's the law. The proposed piece of legislation, which for the record did pass the Republican controlled West Virginia State House would've put an end into that. Like no, it doesn't matter if a judge says you can, doesn't matter if your parents say you can, you gotta wait till you're an actual adult and can vote in order to get married. It just kind of makes sense. But as I said, it's tradition in West Virginia, isn't it? Here is what state Republican senator Mike Stewart, a former federal prosecutor, had to say about this. He said it wasn't a vote against women. You know, said his mother was married when she was 16 and six months later I came along. I'm the luckiest guy in the world.

So because your mom got pregnant when she was either 15 or 16, then was obviously, you know, forced to get married. Cuz that's the way it sounds like. Uhoh, you got yourself pregnant, we're gonna have a shotgun wedding here. And then six months later you were born as the luckiest guy in the world. Gosh darn it. There's literally no floor in the state of West Virginia where a person can be deemed too young to get married. If you get that judge's permission, a frigging two year old could get married. If one judge says, yep, go for it. And y'all couldn't even outlaw that all because your mom had you when she was in her early teens. Thi this is, this is insane. These are Republicans are the real groomers. Like, can we all just agree on

That? Republicans are the groomers, they're the ones who want children to be walking down the aisle. They're the ones who refuse to do anything to protect our children from any of the real threats that they face. Whether it's guns in schools, whether it's environmental degradation, or whether it's Republican predators who wanna marry a 12 year old. Republicans are the threat to our children.