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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMissouri: home to child marriage, corporal punishment and sick 'child welfare' ideas
The Republican war on children continues. State representative Jamie Gragg has introduced a bill that would force teachers to become registered sex offenders if they honor a childs preferred pronouns. A Missouri state senator has claimed that he knows kids who have been married at age 12 (to another minor) and theyre thriving! I thought Texas was closest to being the Taliban, but maybe its backwards Missouri.
Did you know that child marriage is still legal in much of the US? About 300,000 children and teenagers were legally married in the US between 2000 and 2018, according to the advocacy group Unchained at Last. At least 60,000 of those marriages occurred at an age or with a spousal age difference that should have been considered a sex crime.
Did you know that, until quite recently, Missouri was a destination wedding spot for children who wanted to tie the knot? The state has tightened its child marriage laws now and is seeking to ban the practice but not all lawmakers are happy about the changes. Missouri state senator Mike Moon said last year that he knows kids who have been married at age 12 (to another minor) and theyre thriving!
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The bill states that any teacher or school counsellor who provide support or other resources to a child regarding social transition could be found guilty of a class E felony and placed in the same sex offender registration category as someone possessing child sexual abuse images. They would not be able to work at a school again or be within 500ft of one.
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But just because HB2885, as it is currently written, is unlikely to move through the state legislature doesnt mean that it shouldnt alarm us. Extreme bills like this signal where Republicans want to head and help push the Overton window more and more to the right. Pretty soon a moderate is going to mean a raging conservative who is kind enough to think that a teacher shouldnt be called a sex offender for using someones preferred pronouns. (Oh, hang on, thats already what it means! Just how look at how frequently Nikki Haley is labelled a moderate.)
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/07/missouri-anti-trans-bill-teacher-sex-offender
barbaraann
(9,163 posts)CanonRay
(14,119 posts)went to Missouri so he could marry his 15 year old pregnant girlfriend in 1968.