California is currently one of only three states in the country — alongside Mississippi and New Mexico — that sets no minimum age at all for marriage, allowing a child of any age to be legally wed as long as a parent or guardian signs off. A bill designed to close that loophole for good just cleared a major hurdle in Sacramento, passing the state Senate on a unanimous 38-0 vote this past Wednesday.
That religious people are even allowed to be around children is insane.
I would strongly disagree. All mainstream religions condemn pedophilia. In fact, Christianity in particular was instrumental in the shift of social attitudes against child marriage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_purity_movement (along with other things such as contraception, pornography, and prostitution, among a broader movement that opposed alcohol and slavery). It would be fair to point out that one might not give it too much credit as everybody was Christian at the time.
“Everybody” was Christan at the time in the same way that everyone in the past was heterosexual.
Since the cult punished people (either violently, or socially) in societies it had conquered, there’s no way of knowing how many people where “believers”, or just went along out of fear.
My home country was under oppression from the Christian sect for about a thousand years, and guess what? As soon as it was legal and not punished by society, pretty much everyone turned their back on it, to live normal lives. The only people who actually join the cult are either born into broken cultist families, or struggle with addiction to the point where giving up control of their life seem like the only solution.
Exposing children to religion is abuse and nothing else.
That is the point of my last sentence. I definitely agree that Christianity has a highly imperialist legacy, but in areas ravished by capitalism instead of colonists, it provides some moral code against endless exploits. Should people be able to find morals and mutual aid without this crutch? Yes, but this provides quite some existing organization against chaos. Karl Marx has a few words on this as well. I agree it’s no good where it does not belong but this article is about California.
It’s additionally imperialistic to let imperialists generalize to our own religions. I believe I should have the right to make Zongzi and maybe fly a kite with my children on Duanwu.