File This Under Disgusting

I heard about this the other day while listening to the local radio station, lest you think I'm in the habit of regularly tracking down underage women to proposition. It's an incredibly complicated and ick inducing thing but this website lists underage girls for marriage. Pay the “bride price” (of which the site gets a cut), get the parent's permission, and then it's off to the altar. Depends on which state you're in but, basically, in most places if you have parental permission then the age requirements for getting married and, thus, sexual consent, are waved. So, the upshot is that if you have $30~50 then you, too, can legally have sex with a tight young teenager. Some as young as 13, although the majority range in the 15~16 range. Which, you know, isn't so creepy when you're 18 but when you're 30~50 yourself? Definite squick factor at play.

There's not much more to go on than a picture and a barebones way of contacting your potential child bride (Remember to keep it under 1000 words and not, you know, be a completely perverted asshole!). Some of the miniature bios which prominently make a point of the girl's age are good for a laugh in that “crying on the inside at the horror of it all” way. For example, there's Kristin...

She likes parties and has spent more time with boys than we’d have liked her to. We had a family talk and decided that it was time she settled down with a man who could meet her needs and help her fulfill her dreams of being an actor or singer. She’s a bit fiery but worth it.

Or Kyra

She is bright and funny and full of life and while she has little direct experience with the opposite sex we have made sure she is aware of everything she needs to know to be a good wife and mother.

Yeah, I'm just going to go scrub myself with lava soap until the filth washes away now.

Look, I'll be among the first to say that the laws regarding sex and sexuality are screwed up in America. Relics of a bygone Victorian age where sex was a matter of control and reproduction rather than mutual enjoyment. When sexuality was a frightening, dirty thing that was best avoided altogether instead of something wonderful, something beautiful, and a god-given part of human nature. That they could desperately use some updating, some streamlining, to be both more consistent and effective. There are people, after all, who've committed statutory rape on prom night who wind up on sex offender registries along with child molesters and rapists because we're so frightened, so terrified, and it's so easy to seem tough instead of just.

I'd favor a move to a more progressive, more compassionate set of laws that recognizes that, you know, people don't magically become sexual beings on their 18th birthday (It's actually 16 here in Michigan, thank you very much skeavy chatroom conversations of my past.). I don't know about you, but by the time I hit puberty, before I even attended sex ed, I was pretty well conversant in the general theory of where you stick you penis into a girl if not all the details. And in this day and age of the internet and google and increasingly younger onsets of puberty, I imagine it's even easier to find out than the scrounging through bookshelves and magazines that I had to perform as a youth. Children (People in middle school, in high school not, you know, four year olds.) know about these things. These children certainly practice these sorts of things or else there wouldn't be so many pregnant twelve and thirteen year olds running around. They're biologically hardwired to feel and experiment. And what the law, what society should do is recognize that. And, instead of repressing it (And knowingly winking at them to head out and make sure they've gotten laid before they're 18 or whatever by reinforcing that message of sexuality through movies and songs and ads and more.) we should be encouraging it. In a safe, shelter form that allows our children to learn. Leaving them well prepared for when they grow up to have enriching, fulfilling, satisfying relationships. The point would be not to treat our children like adults, as people able to make their own decisions freely and fully because they're capable of understanding the repercussions but, instead, as people who will eventually have to transition into being adults. And to impart on them the necessary training and wisdom they'd need for that step. I'd have no idea how to actually go about that, of course (And I also know it's a political loser but, hey, I'm a crazy eyed left-of-left liberal here for a reason.), but I suspect the first step would to relax or rework concepts like the age of consent.

And, to be clear, I have no problems with the concept of an arranged marriage. Think it might be nice, all things considered to have all that stress and anxiety of finding a worthy mate taken care of for you. I'm a little more skeptical of the “bride price” or dowery since it's like reducing people to objects. To property with value to be traded for a handful of cash and that's not a road I think we can travel too far down. But I understand it's something of a tradition and I can't say I object to it too strenuously.

But this website? Is an abomination. What these people are doing is exploiting a loophole in the laws to sanction pedophilia. To press these girls into lives as concubines, as servants, to much older men. With a wink. With a nod. With the complicity of the parents, the adults, involved. During the interview I heard, the representative of the website spoke of tradition, of legality, as if the law not disallowing it or people having done it before made it somehow okay. Those words ring hollow with me. Justifications for some truly sick and disgusting behavior. Laws can be changed. And years of doing the same thing don't mean you have to continue making the same mistake.