[MUSIC]
Do you know any kids who have been married at age 12?
>> I don't need to.
>> I do.
And guess what?
They're still married.
>> You just heard a portion of a hearing having to do with potentially changing
some of the child marriage laws in the state of Missouri.
And unfortunately, there's a Republican you heard there named Mike Moon who is
defending his support for protecting child marriage during a debate on a bill that he
introduced that would ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth in the state.
Now, it's really important to understand how insane his arguments
in favor of protecting child marriage happen to be in the context of
legislation that he is proposing to ban gender-affirming care for minors.
Because the whole argument is this is really not safe for minors, okay,
we need to do something about this.
So is it somehow safe to allow for really,
really young kids in some cases to get married, right?
Anyway, the video shows Democratic State Representative Peter Meredith
confronting Moon over his past comments that he had made in regard
to parents rights to make decisions concerning their own children.
Let's show you a little more of that exchange.
>> I've heard you talk about parents' rights to raise their kids how they want.
In fact, I just double-checked, you voted No on making it illegal for
kids to be married to adults at the age of 12 if their parents consented to it.
You said, actually, that should be the law because it's the parents' right and
the kid's right to decide what's best for them, to be raped by an adult, okay?
>> Do you know how many kids who have been >> [CROSSTALK]
>> At age 12?
>> That was the law.
You voted not to change it.
>> Do you know any kids who have been married at age 12?
>> I don't need to.
>> I do.
And guess what? They're still married.
>> Gentlemen >> My God, I can't.
Cenk, I'm gonna toss to you, I'm disgusted with what he just said.
>> Look guys, I mean, Republicans, they show you who they are all the time.
We're really worried about little kids and groomers out there, Democrats and such.
There's a 12- year-old.
Can I get married to her?
I mean, look, they're arguing for getting married to 12- year-olds.
You just heard him yourself.
Now look, he's gonna give nuance later.
We'll share it with you guys.
We're fair, right?
But I don't think any 12-year-old should get married, period.
It's not even close.
I mean, what are they gonna say next?
I mean, three-year-olds, should the three-year-olds get married?
I mean it's really disgusting.
By the way,
we gotta petition on this because the Republicans keep doing this over and over
again in different states while pretending that they care about pedophilia.
They keep lowering the age and preventing Democrats from passing bills saying that
underage kids should not get married.
So we've got tyt.com/petitions.
We'll put the link in the description box, and we're saying, Speaker McCarthy,
hashtag protect our kids from legalized grooming.
Because you actually can pass a national law, the House can do it.
Kevin McCarthy, what happened?
I saw you guys were against groomers.
Hashtag protect our kids.
And here are Republican monsters going around saying you should be able to marry
12-year-olds.
By the way,
it could be other people other kids that are under 18 that get married at that age,
but it could also be grown ups adults that get married to kids that young, crazy.
>> Okay, so later he didn't walk back his comments.
He tried to clarify that it's more nuanced than that.
It's more nuanced than that, because in the case that he was referencing,
it wasn't a 25-year-old getting married to a 12-year-old.
It was a 12-year-old getting married to an 11-year-old, okay?
They should not get married, they should not get married.
He says via Twitter, something that is often missing is the back story.
With regard to my answer, I did not discuss the details.
A 12 year old impregnated a minor of similar age with consent
of the parents they married and are still married today.
There might be some more details to that story that he's not sharing with us.
There are, unfortunately some parents in the country who believe in
fundamentalist religion and would much rather force their 12-year-old or
11-year-old daughter to get married to someone who impregnated
her rather than what I would venture to say is probably a better decision,
which is not have an 11-year-old carry a pregnancy to term.
>> Yeah, look, guys,
it's almost always the parents forcing little kids into a marriage.
It reminds me of that story we did about this ancient tradition still left in
some Central Asian republics where a guy kidnaps a woman, rapes her, and
then the parents of the woman come by and
convince their daughter to get married to her rapist cuz that's tradition.
We're not that far off here in America.
Look, I got kids right around that age.
And so for all of you parents who know what 11 and
12-year-olds are like, married, married at 11 or 12?
You gotta be absolutely nuts or a Republican to believe that.
And I don't ever wanna hear the word groomer coming out of a Republican's
mouth again.
>> You know it's interesting I've noticed that they have overused that word so
much that some conservatives are starting to feel repelled by it cuz they're like,
you guys are just applying this to everything you don't like.
The word has lost its meaning.
And I'm happy that they've come to that realization.
But real quick, back to child marriage in America overall, as of July of 2022,
eight states in the US had zero statutory minimum age requirements, and
only seven states have banned underage marriages with no exceptions.
And when it comes to Moon,
he does have a documented history of supporting child marriage.
For instance, in 2018, Missouri had passed a law raising
the marriage age in the state from 15 to 16 and
requiring parental permission for older teenagers to marry.
Now, what did Moon say in regard to that?
Moon opposed the bill at the time, citing the same anecdote of
a couple he met in college who had married one another at age 12.
He said they were still happily married and acknowledged that
while they provided an extreme example, they were something to ponder.