Missouri Senator's Child Marriage Comments Spark Anger
Springfield News-Leader reported that Moon met the couple "who had married one another at age 12" while in college.A clip of the interaction between the Missouri legislators garnered attention online, with social media users scrutinizing Moon for his stance, but some critics equated his remarks to his support of 12-year-olds being allowed to marry adults."The fact that Missouri Senator Mike Moon said that 12 year olds can be married off to adults just sickens me.
My daughter is nearly 11 and still plays with Barbies and her baby dolls," Jess Piper, the executive director of Blue Missouri, tweeted.Most states have a minimum marriage age of 16 years old and advocacy groups have called for all states to set the minimum age to 18, with no exceptions.
In 2018, Missouri passed a law raising its marriage age from 15 to 16 that requires parental consent for older teenagers to marry—a bill that Moon opposed at the time.Moon first used the happily-married couple that he knew from college as an example in his arguments against raising the age limit back when the state's minimum marriage age was still 15.On Tuesday, when the Republican introduced his bill, which seeks to prevent minors from accessing gender-affirming care, he brought the couple up again, but again some criticized him under the presumption Moon was an advocate for 12-year-olds marrying adults."He is an advocate for the marriage of 12 year olds to adults.
He says their marriages are long lasting when they marry as children," one Twitter user wrote of Moon. "I guess with no education or options.
