While Trump's Republican cronies in Congress relentlessly work to push an outrageous, contrived QAnon narrative of LGBTQ "child grooming" and accusations of pedophilia defense against Democrats, their bluster is exposed as yet more projection by other members of their own party.
A new bill proposed by Tennessee state Rep. Tom Leatherwood would eliminate the current age requirement for marriage and enable "alternative forms of marriage" to those who "conscientiously object to the current pathway to marriage" — effectively legalizing the marriage of adults to children.
Sign your name to tell Tennessee lawmakers to vote NO on the bill to remove the age limits on marriage!
Tennessee has the 13th most child marriages in the United States. From 2000 to 2018 — when the state's age restriction for marriage was first introduced — nearly ten thousand children were married to adults, the vast majority of whom were young girls married to older men.
Removing the age restriction on marriage provides predators with a convenient way to escape repercussions for statutory rape and makes teens even more vulnerable to coercion and abuse from older men.
This bill is yet another pernicious attempt to entrench the patriarchal control over young women by conservative white men and has no business even being discussed in the year 2022.
Call on the Tennessee legislature to vote down the bill to legalize child marriage!
