The age of consent for sex has nothing to do with your contention that California laws have anything to do with kissing Muslim ass. It's a red herring. Does it make sense? I don't think so. But I would suggest that the main problem is the idiocy of criminalizing sex between 17 year olds. But the inconsistency has absolutely nothing to do with your claim. Most states have to reconcile all kinds of things that involve consent for younger folks. You have marriage, sex, and abortion, just to name three. Should all three have the same age? Should the rules be absolute or should there be exceptions? I don't know. Neither do politicians.
At least you discovered Unchained at Last. Unchained at Last is an advocacy group created by Fraidy Reiss, an orthodox jew who was forced at age 19 into a marriage that was abusive and violent. She is the motivating force behind the movement to restrict marriage to adults. She presents statistics, which she says she obtained by studying marriage licenses in states where they were available, but I've never seen any data or other information that would allow one to verify her conclusions.
Even so, according to her own data, the total number of children married in the U.S. fell by 50% between 2000 and 2010 -- all on its own. Unchained was founded in 2011, and no state enacted an adult only, no exception law during that period. So, to the extent child marriage is a problem, the problem has been going away all by itself.
by the way, her data also shows that New Jersey, the state with the highest percentage of Muslims, had only the 36th highest rate of child marriage between 2000 and 2010.
As you found the article in the OC register, you know that California has, indeed, changed its marriage laws in response to Unchained's lobbying. And if you read Chris Cristie's veto message, you know that he proposed changes to New Jersey's marriage law to address the concerns raised by Unchained.
Where you stopped being curious was in believing that child marriage data isn't available in California. Of course it is. You have to have a court order to get one. All you needed to do was keep reading the newspapers at the time instead of stopping at one that said something you liked. If you'd kept reading, you'd have found out more data.
LA county as a population of about 10 million. California is about 40 million. In the five-year period before California was considering the changes to its marriage law, a total of 44 petitions were filed for child marriages. That's less than 10 per year, or less than 40 per year in the entire state. Yet, Unchained estimated 3000 per year. And what percentage of the child marriages that actually occurred were actually forced as opposed to voluntary?
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/art ... 268497.phpI applaud the efforts of Ms. Reiss to fight forced marriages and to help rescue women who are trapped in those marriages. But here's the question: given the actual size of the problem, will her demand of an absolute age limit on the right to marry actually solve the problem? And what are the tradeoffs? You can figure that out by reading about who opposed the absolute limit in California and why.
Who opposed the bill? Not organizations of Muslims, Orthodox Jews, or Hmong. It was the ACLU and the National Center for Youth law. Marriage is a fundamental right, remember? And folks under 18 have constitutional rights.
The focus of efforts should be on abusive and coerced relationships, regardless of marital status, said Phyllida Burlingame of the ACLU’s Northern California chapter.
Referring to current regulations, including the requirement of a court order allowing a juvenile to marry, she said California had “a strong package of both programs and laws that prevent coerced marriage among youth, and a lack of data showing this is a widespread problem.” Hill’s original proposal, she said, “was a solution that wasn’t necessarily going to have the impact on improving young people's health and relationships that we want.”
Other opponents said marriage is a fundamental right, and that some juveniles not only marry willingly but benefit from the choice.
“Any legislation to eliminate this core right,” said the National Center for Youth Law in a statement opposing Hill’s initial legislation, “must be based on concrete data and information that demonstrates this drastic step is the most effective and appropriate strategy to address the harms being alleged, and that there are not other less extreme options available.”
There is also a genuine concern that the relatively small number of marriages forced on children will simply be driven underground if there is an absolute age limit without exception. In other words, it is questionable whether simply making marriage to a person under 18 illegal will significantly reduce the actual problem: young people being forced into a sexual relationship against their will.
by the way, marriage statistics for other countries don't apply to American Muslims. Stop trying to confirm your suspicions and focus on learning.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951