Nearly 30 protesters joined Unchained At Last outside the office of Assemblyman Gary Schaer in Passaic – dressed in bridal gowns and veils, with arms chained and mouths taped – to send a powerful message to Schaer and other New Jersey lawmakers: Pass A865, the bill to end child marriage, without exceptions.
“Gary Schaer. Show you care. Let’s be just like Delaware,” the protesters chanted from the sidewalk outside Schaer’s office.
New Jersey was about to become the second U.S. state to end all child marriage, until the assembly speaker pulled A865 from the assembly agenda on May 24 at the request of Asm. Gary Schaer, who wants to weaken the bill and leave children at risk of forced child marriage. His reason: Schaer suddenly decided ending a human-rights abuse that destroys girls’ lives might somehow offend the Orthodox Jewish community. We believe Schaer was only referring to one biblical law, one that required a rapist to marry his victim and pay her father 50 shekels of silver.
Speakers included:
- Deb Huber, National Organization for Women of New Jersey
- Rachel Gallagher, Westfield 20/20
- Kelly Flannery, Human Rights Watch
- Naila Amin, Naila Amin Foundation
- Fraidy Reiss, Unchained At Last
Child Marriage in New Jersey
New Jersey was poised to become the second U.S. state to end child marriage. And then Asm. Schaer showed up.
The marriage age in New Jersey, like in most U.S. states, is 18. However, children age 16 or 17 can marry with parental “consent” – which is often parental “coercion.” When a child is forced to marry, the perpetrators are almost always the parents. And children of any age can marry with judicial approval – but when a child is forced to marry, the child also is forced to lie to the judge about it.
Since 1995, more than 3,600 children as young as 13 were married in New Jersey, and almost all were girls wed to adult men. In some 160 of those cases, a judge approved the marriage of a child to an adult with an age difference that constitutes statutory rape.
A865 is a simple, commonsense bill with strong, bipartisan support: It eliminates the parental-consent and judicial-approval loopholes. More than half of New Jersey legislators, from both parties, have signed on to the bill as sponsors. In fact, the same bill passed last year with only five no votes out of 120 legislators – but then Gov. Chris Christie, America’s most hated governor, conditionally vetoed it.
Under New Jersey’s new, improved governor, the bill was progressing rapidly again. It already passed in the senate and looked like an easy pass in the assembly, before Schaer pushed Speaker Coughlin to remove it from the agenda.
Schaer now is pushing to set the marriage age at 16 instead of 18, similar to what Christie tried unsuccessfully to do last year. However, more than 95 percent of the children who marry in New Jersey are age 16 or 17, which means Schaer wants the state to end a human-rights abuse, just not for 95 percent of the people impacted by it. That would be like banning age discrimination in hiring practices, except when a job candidate is over age 50.
Further, setting 18 as the minimum age for marriage has a legal and logical basis: That’s the age at which a child becomes an adult and attains the rights necessary to navigate a contract as important as marriage. Setting the age at 16 is completely arbitrary, with no legal or logical basis.
No part of Jewish law – or any other major religion’s law – requires child marriage, as Schaer knows. Besides, the U.S. supreme court has upheld legislation that incidentally forbids an act required by religion, as long as the legislation does not target religious practice.