A Deeper Issue at Work

Speaking of all of this, Iraq's parliament is under fire for considering "an amendment to the personal status law that would allow men to marry girls as young as 9." Well, that's what the human rights group and the US government says it would do.

As Kyle Shideler points out, what the amendment actually does is simply make Islamic law the governing law in family cases. The amendment says that when issuing decisions on family law cases, "the court should follow the rulings of religious scholars for Sunni or Shiite sects, depending on the husband's faith." Specific governing authorities for each of these fiqhs are identified so that there is no confusion as to which rulings are final. The 'marriage at 9' thing is merely a consequence of what those rulings of religious scholars have always held, not the point of the amendment.

There's a very similar issue at stake in the Alabama matter.
We need to talk about the segment of American culture that probably doesn’t think the allegations against Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore are particularly damning, the segment that will blanch at only two accusations in the Washington Post expose.... That segment is evangelicalism. In that world, which Moore travels in and I grew up in, 14-year-old girls courting adult men isn’t uncommon.

I use the phrase “14-year-old girls courting adult men,” rather than “adult men courting 14-year-old girls,” for a reason: Evangelicals routinely frame these relationships in those terms. That’s how I was introduced to these relationships as a home-schooled teenager in the 1990s, and it’s the language that my friends and I would use to discuss girls we knew who were in parent-sanctioned relationships with older men.
She offers a number of cases of people advocating this as the ideal approach for shaping young women into solid members of society. (The idea that a sexual relationship with an older man might do the same thing for young men appears in Plato's Symposium.) There is, as defenders of Roy Moore have pointed out, plenty of Biblical support for the position. Mary herself was married to a much older Joseph at about this age, and although she remained a virgin there's no reason to think that God would have put his only son into a harmful family environment. In the case of John the Baptist, the family arrangements he was born into were about the same; and there are plenty of other examples to find.

This creates a much bigger problem, here and in Iraq. The contemporary American standard is that a proper degree of sexual consent requires a more complete equality, including in the ages of the consenting partners. A 16 year old is not thought to be able to consent in quite the right way; she's thought to be too powerless compared to a 27 or 32 year old man. But this means arguing against not merely tradition, but the exemplars of the tradition. It's not merely that Islam has done it this way for a long time; it's that Muhammad himself did it. It's not merely that Christianity has inherited an ancient Jewish tradition of marriage; it's that God himself sent his son into a marriage just like the one being criticized as immoral.

16 comments:

Elise said...

In the linked article and, I believe, in earlier times, there is no concept of "consent" on the part of the girl involved. She was and is expected to do what her parents tell her to do. Once married, she was and is expected to do what her husband tells her to do. Thus the whole issue of whether the girl is old enough to give informed consent can be sidestepped. So I don't think it's that the Evangelicals described in the article think 14 or 16 year-olds are capable of informed consent; rather it's that those Evangelicals don't think the girls should be allowed to consent - or, rather, the girls should not be allowed to *not* consent.

As for the argument that God Himself sent his son into a marriage with a child bride, it is my understanding that Christianity is experiential, which I take to mean (in part) that God works with what humans are up to at whatever point in time He manifests. He also sent His son into a situation where that son would be crucified. That doesn't say to me that I should start running around nailing up people who question my religion or my government.

If there are Christian men who believe it is okay to marry 14-year-olds because Jesus' father did so then I would argue that they should do the other stuff that Joseph did: keep kosher; honor Jewish traditions and law; and support, love, and care for a child that is his wife's but not his. Further, if they are of the Christian tradition that insists on the eternal virginity of Mary, then they also have to keep their hands off their child brides. Otherwise, they're just cherry-picking their religion's history to justify their lust and their desire for a subservient wife.

Grim said...

So I don't think it's that the Evangelicals described in the article think 14 or 16 year-olds are capable of informed consent...

I don't know what the Evangelicals in the article believe. However, I am reminded of the example of Mary, of whose consent to be the mother of God is made much by at least Catholic theology. The whole concept of the "Immaculate Conception" is not that Mary conceived while remaining 'immaculate' (i.e., viriginal), but rather that Mary herself was conceived in a way that kept her clean of original sin. This was done by God, according to the doctrine, just so that she could consider and consent to carrying Jesus. God didn't want to impose this on Mary, as my favorite nun explained it to me; he wanted someone he could ask, who had the right kind of conscience to consider.

That may not appear in the Evangelical doctrine; it could be a purely Catholic reading of that set of passages. It's also not especially informative, since Mary's capacity to consent to becoming pregnant and a mother at that age was a unique feature of her immaculate conception. It's not relevant to ordinary teenagers.

Further, if they are of the Christian tradition that insists on the eternal virginity of Mary, then they also have to keep their hands off their child brides.

Well, except that Mary is exceptional here, too; the other young brides in the Bible are not expected to remain virgins eternally.

In any case, I'm not here defending the tradition; I'm merely pointing out that it's a deeper problem than merely being 'traditional.' These particular traditions lie at, and look to be to some degree justified by, the exemplars of the faith. That makes this argument problematic:

As for the argument that God Himself sent his son into a marriage with a child bride, it is my understanding that Christianity is experiential, which I take to mean (in part) that God works with what humans are up to at whatever point in time He manifests.

God presumably might have manifested earlier or later; next week, even, or at some pre-agricultural moment characterized by greater sexual equality (at least if the anthropologists are to be believed, hunter-gatherer clans tend this way). Or Jesus could have been a Viking; there was always a greater sense of respect for women in the North. "Whatever point" makes it sound like an unavoidable fact-of-the-matter, whereas the point of manifestation is just another choice from the perspective of the Almighty.

Jesus was to suffer on the Cross, but there's no reason to think that Jesus was sent to suffer otherwise; or that his family situation was not happy, either for him or for any of his relatives. The family is depicted as blessed by God, and Jesus seems to love and respect his family (including his mother, at whose request he performs his first public miracle). There's no sense in the text that the family is involved in a great moral crime; all humans are sinful, but this sort of relationship isn't even depicted as among the sins.

My point, again, is not to defend the approach. It's to point out that reform is harder than it looks, because you have to pursue the reform while somehow sidestepping the fact that the tradition supports the thing you're trying to reform. It can be done; similar arguments were made about slavery. But it isn't easy to do, and indeed this case is harder than the slavery case in some respects. This really is presented as a good institution characteristic of happy families, rather than simply a feature of the times that you would prefer to avoid but that you might not be able to do. E.g., Jews periodically fall into slavery in the Bible, but they always wish to escape it. That's not the case with marriage.

Cassandra said...

State law governs minimum marriageable age. In many Southern states and some Western ones, the minimum age is 14, 15, or 16. Generally there are some additional requirements (parental consent, or emancipated minors only).

But it's not as though this is some outlandish exception to American traditions. When I was in paralegal school, I am pretty sure there was one state where the minimum age was 13.

All of these ages are past the average age of menarche - girls physically mature earlier now due to better nutrition and frankly, obesity.

9 is a whole different ball of wax.

Ymarsakar said...

The Kurds should secede, but Hussein stopped that by working with Turkey. Good job.

That may not appear in the Evangelical doctrine; it could be a purely Catholic reading of that set of passages.

It is part of the Vatican theology and doctrine that humans stand as intercessors between humanity and their Savior. The basis for a lot of the problems in Luther's 95 theses, which wasn't even most of the problems. Protestants carried a lot of unknown problems with them, such as in the King James bible.

Mary is considered the Queen of Heaven. Meaning, her position is like that of the Queen Mother of Constantine. Not the ruler, but someone with influence almost equal to the ruler. That is why people ask the saints and Mary to intercede for them, not to the Holy Father (the Patriarch of Rome is not the Holy Father) but to his Son, the immortal form of Jesus. That is also what indulgence was based upon, the ability of the Patriarch of Rome to supposedly intercede for humans under divine law transgression, so that Jesus is "allowed" to intercede for them.

The Vicar is the gatekeeper, and the one you have to bribe or influence. If you can't do that, the Queen Mother, get your King's approval there. If not there, then you have to get into the King's Court, and commoners aren't allowed into the King's Court, so good luck with that.

It is a very Medieval and Roman way of thinking.

Mary did not remain a virgin. What was her husband going to do? What about her other sons, like Jesus' brother James, was he born from the father's adultery then?

Roman theology is not very close to the Hebrew traditions or to the ones that came after. A rabbi, as Jesus was called by the Pharisees, had to be married. Paul mentioned that a Bishop needed at least one wife.

There are severe human policies, doctrinal and dogmatic points, that serve as the reason for the Reformation, totally besides the corruption even. They serve as excuses for the other.


In order for a religion to reform, it has to get rid of centuries of baggage. The Protestants barely got rid of some of the baggage going back to Constantine. They didn't get rid of the Masoretic text errors "corrections by scribes" or the King James bible only, or other issues like 4th Ecumenical Council.

Even to this day people don't appreciate the Dead Sea Scrolls and why a little difference in the matter of translating Deuteronomy 32 changes everything.

Cassandra said...

One more thought.

Exceptions to the general marriageable age are usually in place to make the best of what is already a less than ideal situation (a young girl who has already had sex and often is pregnant and not being supported by her parents).

Though I do not thing most 14 year old girls are mature enough to be married, many are already mothers/pregnant, many have already had sex, and frankly if their family situations are worse than being married to the father of their children, the government is in some danger of letting the perfect become the enemy of the "better than the alternative".

I tend to think that any great disparity in power/status/age/maturity leads to unhealthy relationships. But in many of these cases, a truly healthy or equal relationship is not in the cards and at some point, courts and laws have to deal with "what is", rather than "what ought to be".

Which means, [[[shuddering in horror]]] that an unequal relationship in which (best case) an older man truly cares for a younger girl might not be the worst outcome. Yeah, I know: shoot me.

Elise said...

I know that you're not defending the tradition, Grim. I'm saying that my push-back against the argument that it's okay because Joseph did it is to point out all the other things that Joseph did which also contributed to family happiness.

"Whatever point" makes it sound like an unavoidable fact-of-the-matter, whereas the point of manifestation is just another choice from the perspective of the Almighty.

Then I apologize for being unclear. Why God decided to send Jesus when He did is - ahem - above my pay grade. My point is that whatever His reasons He manifested in terms the people then living could understand. One could argue that the prevalence of marriage between older men and teenage girls was part of why He manifested when he did but I'm not aware of a scriptural back-up for that (which doesn't mean there isn't one). It's always tricky to distinguish between "essential to the arrival of Christ" and "just happened to be going on at the time" (if one can even use such a phrase with regard to what God is doing). I'm suspicious of assigning the hard stuff to "just happened" and the sexual stuff to "essential" and think that asking for an explanation of how the Evangelicals in the article make those distinctions would be part of any discussion about their traditions using Joseph and God as exemplars.

Well, except that Mary is exceptional here, too; the other young brides in the Bible are not expected to remain virgins eternally.

No, but if one is going to make the argument that marrying a 14-year-old is okay because Joseph did it then one cannot drag in other 14-year-old brides. If the argument is that marrying a 14-year-old is okay because all the big names in the Bible did so then I'm back to asking the people making this argument how they decide which Biblical activities are okay/required/a good idea and which can be safely ignored.

Sigh. Again, I'm not arguing with you, Grim. I'm saying that, for me, a lot of making the argument against child marriage is getting an explanation from those who support it of why they've chosen that particular aspect of the Bible to celebrate while ignoring other aspects.

Elise said...

State law governs minimum marriageable age. In many Southern states and some Western ones, the minimum age is 14, 15, or 16. Generally there are some additional requirements (parental consent, or emancipated minors only).

Yes and the linked article does some sliding around in treating older men marrying 15-year-olds as being the same as older men having sex with 15-year-olds outside of marriage. To me they're both creepy but there is a legal and moral difference between the two types of behavior.

9 is a whole different ball of wax.

Yup.

Cassandra said...

To me they're both creepy but there is a legal and moral difference between the two types of behavior.

I couldn't agree more, Elise.

I was married at 19 - to a guy the same age, though. I'm pretty sure I could have been married (and even a mother) at 15, though that obviously wouldn't have been ideal. But I had a great family, so I had more options.

General guidelines are just that - general, intended to apply across the board, but definitely not applicable to every person/situation. We are a first world nation, so that skews our view of what's right/good. We have life expectancies for women in the 80s. In Christ's time, it was more like 30-35. That has to move the age of first-time motherhood down somewhat, even considering that girls physically matured later back then (12-14 by some accounts, or even older).

I matured very early (by 11, I was regularly mistaken for a 15 or 16 year old, even though I was thin). Nowadays, some girls - particularly overweight ones - can physically hit puberty as young as 9 or 10. My husband looked like a man at 17, but many boys at that age still look like boys. I didn't recognize many of the guys at our 25th HS reunion - some of them grew 5 inches or more in college and looked completely different from their HS photos.

That said, physical maturity <> mental/emotional maturity, but that sure does cause some issues for society in general.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Brightbill's op-ed was also in the Washington Post and was emailed to me.

First, it is mostly bullshit. I have been an evangelical for decades, sending my kids to three different Baptist schools and have never heard of any advocacy for 14 y/o girls marrying older men, nor anything close. My sons also went to Christian colleges in KY and SC and had never heard of it either. The number of child marriages nationwide last year was 57K, 26K of which were males. Presumably, those males married females of similar age. That only leaves 5K girls under 17 for those creepy fundamentalist guys to marry. That brings it down to fringe phenomenon right there. (I did encounter some blame-the-girl-for-flirting-with-older-men attitude. I knew some of those girls, and I had often guessed they had been sexually molested even before they hit any stage of sexuality. Their behavior was sometimes clingy and could seem sexualised if you were a predatory guy who wanted to interpret it that way. But no one was saying those girls should be encouraged to marry men twice their age.)

Second, all her examples were white. Mexican-American girls marry younger than Caucasians, African-American girls a bit older. If we count not married, but having children, then both those groups have children much younger. So we now have a fringe of a fringe that we're talking about. But the article was all DUCK DYNASTY! FUNDAMENTALISTS! CREEPY WHITE GUYS!

NH does allow 13 y/o females and 14 y/o males to marry with parental and court permission. It hasn't happened in years. I recall a newspaper article in the 1960's about a 13 y/o with a 19 y/o boyfriend who was trying to get court approval for marriage, as her mother said it was okay and no one could find the father. The explanation I remember for the law was much as Cassandra says: making the best of a bad situation.

On that score, consider a situation I have encountered a few times over the years in mental health: a young woman - in this case 18-25, not 14-17 - who has married a man twice her age, and it feels creepy in some way. She is limited in some way - close to DD, very disorganised, or with some medical problem. He seems like no prize, but is rather hapless and only comparatively smarter and more organised than she. He goes to work and brings home some terrible paycheck. Or they both have formal disabilities and live off their combined checks. He's decent enough, never violent, talks to her nicely, puts up with her scatteredness and getting into trouble. He considers himself lucky to have someone so pretty. She considers herself lucky to have someone who cares about her.

If you step back and look at the broader picture, what other choices do they realistically have? The Brighthill editorial wants you to think about smart evangelical lasses who should be going on to become Senators but are being herded into ridiculous unbalanced marriages to preachers with southern accents. Yeah, I'm sure that's happening all the time. Just think of all the grrll power we could unleash if we could just crush those pesky evangelicals once and for all.

The editorial is not about protecting teenage girls. It's about political competition, and discrediting your competitors.

Grim said...

On that score, consider a situation I have encountered a few times over the years in mental health: a young woman... close to DD... He goes to work and brings home some terrible paycheck. Or they both have formal disabilities and live off their combined checks. He's decent enough, never violent, talks to her nicely, puts up with her scatteredness and getting into trouble. He considers himself lucky to have someone so pretty. She considers herself lucky to have someone who cares about her.

If you step back and look at the broader picture, what other choices do they realistically have?

Indeed, insofar as they've found a way to be happier than they'd otherwise be -- and especially in the cases in which he manages to support them, so they don't live off the state -- that represents a real improvement over most other likely options.

That's a different conversation in a way, though. Here you're already on the ground of 'Having accepted that reason and not religious tradition should order our social relations, what does reason tell us about cases of this type?' That's a different conversation from, 'How do we convince people who are modeling their lives on a textualist reading of their faith to abandon this tradition, given that it has significant textual support in their holy scriptures?'

Grim said...

Again, I'm not arguing with you, Grim. I'm saying that, for me, a lot of making the argument against child marriage is getting an explanation from those who support it of why they've chosen that particular aspect of the Bible to celebrate while ignoring other aspects.

That's a fair question. On the other hand, one possible response to it is to double down: to move from Orthodox to Ultra-Orthodox, for example. "You're right: we should be keeping kosher."

I guess in a way that tends to shift the problem more and more towards what AVI is calling a fringe. Maybe that's enough; maybe not.

Matt said...

'How do we convince people who are modeling their lives on a textualist reading of their faith to abandon this tradition, given that it has significant textual support in their holy scriptures?'

It occurs to me that the presumably stronger influence of tradition and community in those times might have allowed one to function effectively as an adult at a younger age. Today, in our society, the far broader range of choices available to a young person might demand a higher level of maturity in order to successfully navigate.

Texan99 said...

Having grown up in a wealthy secular culture that's placed more and more emphasis on women's equality with the passing years since my birth, I'm naturally a little suspicious of marriages with severe built-in power imbalances. I would only say that it's a somewhat rare man who's up to the task of behaving well in a power-imbalance situation, whether it's a child-bride marriage or monarchy or slavery. It's not impossible to behave well, but we're increasing the odds of trouble. Anyone with that much power had better have been raised really well and have a strong, strong moral character.

If confronted with a sexual relationship between an older man and a very young girl, if I were persuaded they were the exception to the usual danger, naturally my bias would kick in in favor of letting private institutions and traditions control over laws made by distant strangers. But this is one of those situations where even I think the state plays a legitimate role in looking out for a lone citizen surrounded by people who may or may not understand or respect the difficulties she is facing.

Also, a guy in 1st-century Israel who takes a child bride is only following tradition and has not been selected from a society in which a mentally healthy guy takes the psychological danger of power imbalances into account. In our own society, the guy who wants a child bride is far less likely to be a regular, stand-up guy and more likely to be a creep. His choice warrants a little extra scrutiny from anyone who doesn't like to see children exploited.

Elise said...

Also, a guy in 1st-century Israel who takes a child bride is only following tradition and has not been selected from a society in which a mentally healthy guy takes the psychological danger of power imbalances into account. In our own society, the guy who wants a child bride is far less likely to be a regular, stand-up guy and more likely to be a creep. His choice warrants a little extra scrutiny from anyone who doesn't like to see children exploited.

Perfectly put, Tex - thanks.

douglas said...

A few thoughts as I read this- I think many of the facts are difficult for most people to know with certainty and personal experience is a questionable source because of the large discrepancies between people in these matters. It also doesn't help that we're dealing with things that happened thirty of forty years ago in some cases- times do change.

"girls physically mature earlier now due to better nutrition and frankly, obesity."
There is pretty good evidence ("Some possible underlying causes of precocious puberty are thought to be obesity [1b], social factors, and environmental contamination." that one of the causes of earlier onset of puberty is exposure to sexual material. In our culture bathed in sexual references, it's unsurprising that we'd see some increase in early onset of puberty.

"In Christ's time, it [life expectancy] was more like 30-35"
This is one of those stats that seems clear on it's face, but may not be so clear. One thing that pulls down your life expectancy numbers rapidly is childhood mortality. Historically, up until the twentieth century really, childhood mortality was just a fact of life. People regularly had 7, 10, 12 kids because it was partly insurance that some would survive, as well as assuring a workforce on the farm (or shop or whatever).

Let's also remember that since having a lot of kids was important for real and practical reasons, it was important to get started early- the clock is ticking, and a woman only has so many years she can have children. This makes marrying a woman in her mid to late teens highly desirable, no matter the age of the man (historically, again I remind everyone).

14 is a difficult age to talk about in any generality. Some girls have started puberty four or five years ago when they're 14, some won't for another two, possibly. That means there is no such thing as a generic 14 year old girl.

I think, given all these facts, it's clear to me at least that these are the sorts of things that should be left to those local to the events to decide if they are appropriate or not, and whether to bless or scorn such things.

And then, all that said, it's still the reality that Roy Moore just became the new Todd Akin club to beat the Republicans with until something else comes along. That's just the reality, truth be damned (if we could even know the truth), unfortunately.

Texan99 said...

It's good to remember that the age of 14 in today's prosperous America is almost nothing like that age anywhere else or at any other time. Royal Navy midshipmen often had positions of considerable responsibility and danger at that age, only 200 years ago. Farm kids of 14 were practically adults, not like modern suburban kids in the least.

Still, we live here and now. Social mores that worked elsewhere and elsewhen may not be for us, unless and until we recover some of our old ways of helping our kids grow up faster. The average 14-year-old in a public school in a nanny state probably has no business getting married off.