"Child Abuse", or just gettin' jiggy with it?

So here's my first-ever blog post, done for the sake of preserving family tradition...we're a very opinionated lot, and we like to have our voices heard! Plus, it gives me an outlet for the voices in my head to release themselves, which probably makes this world a slightly safer place.

Before I go any further, I would like to throw out a ***DISCLAIMER***. I do not (and have never) condoned the marriage of older men to teenage girls. For that matter, I'm not sure if I even condone the act of marriage at all anymore. Regardless, this is not about my opinions, but rather the facts of the actual case at hand.

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Concerning the Fundamentalist church of Latter-Day Saints, and the raid that pulled more than 400 children away from their families...at a cost of more than $12 MILLION to the Texas Taxpayers.
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Before I go throwing my OPINIONS ABOUT THE SITUATION at you, I'll start off with bringing up several very important facts.

1) In the Great State of Texas, a person over the age of 18 is allowed to marry the person of his/her choosing, provided that person chooses another person of the opposite sex.

2) In Texas, a person age 16 or 17 may get married if that person's parents have signed an official form and have had it notarized and delivered to the county court clerk.

3) In Texas, a person younger than age 16 may only be legally married if aforementioned parental consent is granted AND a decree is issued by the judge allowing the marriage to take place.

4) Prior to 2005 (shortly after the FLDS moved to Texas and scared the crap out of everyone), the legal age of marriage in Texas WITH parental consent but WITHOUT a court decree was FOURTEEN YEARS OLD.

5) There is no maximum age for marriage set for those who wish to marry a teenager in the state of Texas.

6) In Texas, as everywhere else in this country, sexual intercourse between a husband and wife was a legal requirement of the marriage contract...and failure to provide this "service" is considered legal grounds for divorce.

So there you have it, folks. I'm a 30 year old man. Legally, I am within my rights to boink a member of the sophomore cheerleading squad...provided her mom says it's okay, and we pay a fee to the state saying that I'm not allowed to boink any other women.

I have no desire to marry a 16 year old girl...or, for that matter, even attempt to carry on a conversation with one. However, the state does say I can legally marry one with her parents' consent, and have all manner of wild hot freaky monkey sex with her until the day one of us dies if her mom writes her a note.

So that's where we're at now. Apparently, the state does not believe that sex between a 16 year old girl and a 30 year old man is "sexual abuse" if they are legally married.

Before we go further, let's take a good hard look at the first amendment of the constitution. Namely, the part about congress passing laws endorsing relgion. The idea that it is "wrong" to marry a person of the same sex, a different race, or even more than one person at a time is based upon nothing other than one group of peoples' beliefs.

In the eyes of the state, marriage IS NOT a "religious institution". According to state law, it is a legal contract between two persons of legal eligibility, who vow to share their money, home, property, legal liabilities, and their bed (or, as was often the case with me and my wife, the tailgate of a Toyota pickup when no one was looking...but that's another story!). Even though Christian and Jewish religious leaders ARE specifically mentioned in the Texas Family Code as being authorized to conduct a marriage ceremony, any officer of any religious organization authorized by that organization my conduct the marriage legally...you can honestly have a legal marriage ceremony conducted in the state of Texas by a priest of the Church of Satan. Really. You can be Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, et cetera and still have your holy one do the deed for you. A couple of good friends and former colleagues of mine are Wiccan, and they had their local priestess (or whatever you call her) do the ceremony. They were all barefoot, and they're still together today, almost a decade later. I preferred to keep religion out of a legal contract, so me and my ex-wife were married by the local Justice of the Peace...in a little room right down the hallway from where we had purchased our state-issued license a few days before.

We paid our fee to the state for the license, we paid our fee to the judge for saying a few words and asking a few questions, we took some pictures, and then we rushed back to the jaccuzi room at the local Best Western for some post-nuptual nookie before meeting up with friends for a small reception.

The thing that gets me, however, is that my wife could have been 16 years old...and all the obscene things we did in that hot tub that shall never be mentioned could have just as legally been done with a high-school sophomore in the same circumstances. Apparently, the legislature of the state of Texas doesn't believe that it's that wrong for an older man to have sex with a teenage girl...

AS LONG AS THEY MEET THE REQUIREMENTS SET BY THE STANDARDS OF MORALITY SET BY OTHER PEOPLE, WHICH GOES DIRECTLY AGAINST THE FIRST AMENDMENT.

If your personal beliefs allow for marriage to more than one person, that's all good and fine...but don't try to exercise your religious beliefs in Texas, because you may find yourself in prison if your beliefs don't fall in line with the religious beliefs of those in our legislature.



I'll end this little diatribe with a quote from Ben Franklin...

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."