No public opposition, but some very quiet private opposition? No worries, there’s a method to end run around an errant legislature in most US states: https://www.ohiosos.gov/office/duties-and-responsibilities/putting-an-issue-on-the-ballot/citizen-initiated-constitutional-amendment
Senate Bill 341 would have ended a loophole letting 17-year-olds marry legal adults up to four years older than them
What’s wrong with that???
17+4=21
21/2=10.5
10.5+7=17.5It fails the basic decency test by 6 months!
Lol
no public opposition
If you go online and insult the Epstein class you’ll likely get hatemail about how you’re not being fair. The opposition is very private and individualized.
I’m certain if we checked the local Fox News station there was plenty of opposition floating around
Ohio is fucked. It has been. Something is fundamentally wrong with Ohio.
“It’s just unbelievable that a bipartisan common sense bill that has no opposition from the public, that costs nothing, it has a $0 price tag…it harms no one except creepy men who prey on teenage girls”
Yep. Stay classy, Ohio…
I agree with that quote, but I would be morbidly interested to see the male to female split on the pedophilic marriages. I assume it’s heavily skewed towards creepy men, but Id guess there have been some creepy women too.
It’s skewed towards harcore religious people that support it. That is what defeated this.
Yeah, they already said pedos.
In a recent 2024 study:
…between 2000 and 2019. Over 75 % of all married children in each state were girls. Girls married men who were an average of 4 years older than they were, and the age gap was substantially larger when girls married than when boys married.
Thanks. I assumed it was heavily that way, but 75% is probably lower than I would have guessed.
I bet the ratio is something like 500:1
When you look up child marriage statistics in the us the numbers are much higher than you would expect though.
per the comment above, 3:1
Over 75% could be anywhere from 75%-~99.9% though. I wonder why they wouldn’t give an exact number.
Who do they think is voting on the bill exactly?
Republicans are fixated with kids.
They are nazi pedophiles, like their pedofuhrer.
Truly following Hitler to a T
Tracks for Ohio
Not surprised, just disappointed. The state government doesn’t care about its citizens, morality, or popular opinion on issues.
My ex married her first husband when she was a minor in Ohio and it really fucked her up.
This feels like a game of, all together now, “Which Evil Is It??”
Is it because they are abusive pedophiles who want fodder for their kind, or is it because they are evil capitalists who want fodder for their factories?
Por que no los dos, am I right?
they buried an important word in the headline: PUBLIC opposition.
It’s amazing how Republicans continually do the things that highlight their passion for youth genitalia. This could have been the easiest win to try and save face for all of the shit going in, and they just doubled down. There really is no excusing that if you’re a Republican you are on team pedophile. It was already clear in their support for Trump, opposition to releasing the Epstein files, and how seemingly every politician busted for CP is Republican, but they can’t even do the most basic, publicly visible thing to not further perpetuate the statistically backed stereotype.
It’s literally any day now before they just become mask off about it. Like they have about the two tiered justice system
I think they mean something different by “family values”
“Think of the children”
The repugnicans need to stop thinking about children so much
they mean their family has value, as in: if I sell off my daughter this guy is gonna give me enough money that i’ll be happy.
So i’m really confused. SB341 initially passed in the state senate with a small portion voting for it, and was sent to the judicial committee. The house version, HB670 was sent directly to judicial. I don’t see an action that says this is dead (but going to committee is a common pathway to let bills die without any press or fanfare. Extremely common for things that the population wants but the politicians do not want to die this way.)
Almost all of the sponsors are democrats, 24 of 43 total. Only 6 republicans sponsored this of 89 in total, so clearly it’s not a big priority for R.
https://legiscan.com/OH/votes/SB341/2025 / https://legiscan.com/OH/bill/HB670/2025
it’s not a big priority for R.
If Republicans have one priority, it’s fucking children.
I read the article but was not really understanding WHY anyone would be opposed to ending it, so I went looking for more information. Turns out the group sponsoring the legislation, Unchained At Last, has its own site, and much more information than is in the article, as well as maps showing how many states have outlawed child marriage altogether, as well as the handful of states where you can be married at 18 but not be legally adult until 21, which is still a form of legal underage marriage.
I had my eyes opened. There is much more information on each of these in the website, but the four reasons they state for needing to end underage marriage are:
Child marriage can easily be forced marriage. The age of majority, when children become legal adults and get the rights of adulthood, is 18 or higher in every U.S. state. Children who have not yet reached the age of majority have limited legal rights and therefore can easily be forced into marriage or forced to stay in a marriage. They face overwhelming legal and practical barriers if they try to leave home to escape a forced marriage, get help from an advocate, enter a domestic violence shelter or retain an attorney. Perhaps most shockingly, children typically are not allowed to initiate a legal proceeding – such as seeking a protective order or even filing for divorce – unless they act through a guardian or other representative. The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights categorizes all child marriage as forced marriage.
Child marriage destroys nearly every aspect of American children’s lives, including their health, education and economic opportunities. It even undermines their physical safety: Individuals in the U.S. who were married before age 18 report high rates of physical, sexual, financial or emotional abuse during their marriage as well as unwanted or unplanned pregnancies.
Child marriage undermines statutory rape laws. In most states and under federal law, sex with a child that would otherwise be considered rape – in some cases, felony rape – becomes legal within marriage. In those situations, the marriage license becomes a “get out of jail free” card for a child rapist.
Child marriage can also be a form of human trafficking. Due to loopholes in immigration laws, thousands of American girls are being trafficked legally for their citizenship, forced to marry adult men from overseas so the men can get a U.S. visa. Similarly, American men are legally importing child brides from overseas.
So now the question becomes one of understanding what’s in it for the Republicans in Ohio to leave the situation as-is, and I think that pretty much answers itself. Case closed.
I was sort of in the same headspace as you. I graduated high school at 17, and some of my friends married their high school sweethearts that June. I dated a senior as a freshman, so if we had gotten serious, I could have been ready to get married at 17.
But all of the points you bring up are valid reasons to make a younger graduate wait a few extra months to get married.
Not to mention that getting married right out of high school hasn’t been a widely successful life choice for a few generations now. It mostly worked up until my parents’ generation, but that was probably more to do with cultural expectations and legal barriers to divorce. None of my late GenX friends who did it stayed with their spouses for more than a few years.
How about instead of being baffled you just go ASK the people who voted against it why? It’s not like it’s a secret ballot or anything…
wdym, ballots are usually secret
