EVERY STATE LETS MINORS MARRY; SOME ALLOW FIRST COUSINS.
States allow children to wed with parents’ OK
It’s been more than a decade, but April Brown still remembers how young and unaware the pretty little girls looked.
“They didn’t have a clue what was going on,” Brown, the chief probate clerk in Cleburne County, Alabama, recalls about the 14and 15-year-old sisters, dressed in their finest, who had been brought across the state line from the House of Prayer Church in Atlanta to wed because marriage laws at the time weren’t as strict in neighboring Alabama. “They were just excited to be getting married. And their families were right there with them and didn’t have a problem with it.”
Alabama today has a minimum age of 18 to marry without consent or 16 with parental consent — not
that it matters in Cleburne County, which in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision legalizing same-sex marriage has stopped issuing marriage licenses altogether. It’s one of a handful of Alabama counties to do so.
“I see a certain degree of irony in all this concern over consenting adults getting married even though a lot of places were recently marrying children,” says Brown, whose name was April Nichols at the time of the House of Prayer marriages in the early 2000s. The church’s pastor told reporters at the time that he wanted to prevent the girls from having premarital sex.
All 50 states, in fact, still allow minors to marry as long as their parents or guardians agree. In Massachusetts, girls can marry as young as 12 with a judge’s consent.
Locally, even though objections to issuing same-sex marriage licenses have caused some clerks to resign and legislators to discuss ways to protect pastors from being required to officiate same-sex weddings, girls can marry as young as 15 in Mississippi or 16 in Tennessee and Arkansas.
Some states also will allow first cousins to marry, though there are age restrictions in some places to lessen the likelihood of conception in such unions.
Tennessee allows marriage between first cousins without restriction. Arkansas and Mississippi do not allow it.
Steve Mulroy, associate dean of the University of Memphis law school, said that while some people may see an ironic association between age or family ties versus the samesex debate, there are two different points at play from a legal standpoint.
“The definition has always been that it’s a function of the state to decide the specifics when it comes to marriage,” he said. “That’s why you have a difference among states on things like age of consent and how closely related people can be.”
But on the question of whether people of the same sex have a fundamental right to marry as long as they meet specific requirements like others, Mulroy said the Supreme Court determined they do.
“You then have a new point to consider, which is the full faith and credit clause of the Constitution. That requires that a marriage recognized in one state be recognized in other states. The Constitution says we’re enough of a union to make that a requirement.”
As for the age question, the Massachusetts age requirement of 12 for girls and 14 for boys, the lowest in the nation, is a bit misleading, according to the Massachusetts Trial Court Law Library.
According to the court’s website, the age limit stems from an 1854 court case in which a girl of 13 married without her mother’s permission. Though the wedding should not have been allowed, a court ruled it was legal once performed since the girl was over 12, which was the legal age of consent for girls (14 for boys).
“As far as we can determine, there is no minimum age,” the law library writes, but adds: “There also is no requirement that the judge approve any request. Each case is simply decided on its own merits.”
The minimum age there to marry without consent, like most states, is 18.
Meanwhile, Brown, the Cleburne County, Alabama, probate clerk, is continuing to wrestle with the fallout from opposition to the Supreme Court’s same-sex ruling.
“I had a local man call just this morning,” Brown said Thursday, “wanting to get a marriage license. He’s probably in his 60s and has been widowed for 12 years. I told him we aren’t issuing marriage licenses in this county any longer, so I had to direct him to a neighboring county.”
Mulroy, who is also a Shelby County commissioner, said if clerks decide to stop issuing marriage licenses rather than issue them to same-sex couples, it isn’t necessarily a problem as long as same-sex couples wanting to marry have another avenue available for getting all the rights associated with legal marriage.
“If clerk issuance of a license is the only way to get it, then not doing it is a problem,” Mulroy said. “But if you can get the same legal benefits without the clerk, it’s not.” CBHS, 1985: July 31-Aug. 1. alumni@ cbhs.org Craigmont, 1985: July 25. craigmontclassof1985@gmail.com Craigmont, 1995: June 20. Jessica Fleming Woody, jessicaleewoody@aol. com Father Bertrand, 1965: July 24-26. Sandra King Payne, sanlopayne@yahoo. com or 901-347-2929, or Marzee Watkins Short, mshort22@aol.com or 901-3857447. Germantown, 1985: July 10-11. Angie Brasfield, 901-277-6887 or ghsclassof1985@yahoo.com Messick, 1970: July 11. Jerry Daniel, 901-755-7408 or jerrydaniel20@yahoo. com South Panola, 1965: July 17-18. Jim Pitcock, jrp@panola.com or 662-9344345. Trezevant, 1975-76: July 24-25. Steve Williams at stephenmwilliams@ hotmail.com, Ruby (Woodley) McNeal at rmcneal@uthsc.edu, Martha (Mack) Jackson at jacksonmj@comcast. net, Debra (McClinton) Dickerson at debrad@cityofmemphiscu.org, Wayne Tiner at wtiner01@comcast.net, Kelly (Treece) Murley at kakmurley@ bellsouth.net, or Greg LeMay at greglemay@bellsouth.net. Whitehaven, 1940s-60s: July 20. 901346-4677. White Station, 1975: July 17-18. Mary Beth Doty Uselton, 901-619-0118 or mbuselton@aol.com, or Bari Wagerman Eiseman, 901-604-5992 or Bari6657@ comcast.net
Booker T. Washington, 1975: