the entire foundation of US criminal law seems to be based on 'reasonableness'. thats a very definite quantifiable thing right? in fact under some totality of the circumstances cases...the supreme court struck down cases that attempted to quantify things. theres no justification for this behavior. but to get on our high horses is not really intellectually honest. im ok with age of consent being 15 (its 14 in canada i believe). but under that with parental permission is inappropriate.
Well, unless they have lots of oil. In which case, we can conveniently ignore it. I personally find myself on the fence regarding the laws and ideals of the Middle East. Do I find it disgusting and horrifying? Yes. Especially when it comes to gender inequality and general barbaric nature of their laws. That said, I'm still not sure it's any of our business.
It's our business when we support their leaders who keep those rules in place and who bans political opposition that has wiped out any semblance of a moderate intellectual movement.
As meh pointed out indirectly Money Talks! in this case its through oil so in a situation like this obviously it wont matter if US government does or does not support their leaders. These kind of active ideology applies pretty much everyday in African countries (Sudan, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda, etc.), India and so on... The laws of Saudi Arabia are a lot more strict than Yemen. If this girl lived in SA and had wondered off alone to some court to find a judge that judge would probably put her in prison or send her back to her husband for doing for leaving without family permission in this case her husbands.
Just finding it ironic that we can look down upon these cultures while calling them barbaric when we have an active and vested interest in keeping them that way, if only because their brutal authoritarian governments are considered "the lesser evil".
I think if they have to be considered the "lesser evil", that says more about the culture, religion and society in these countries than it says about us.
I totally disagree. As long as we are sending money to these douchebags we should be demanding change - or witholding the loot.
8 year olds being put in this situation is humanity's business. Not exclusively US business...not exclusively Middle East business...humanity's.
No one should be defending the rape of an 8 year old child. Arranged marriages are common practice in the east. I agree no one should be forced to marry anyone, but if the parties are consenting, we shouldn't judge it. Americans may find this practice disgusting just like people in east find adultery and divorce disgusting.
so what? Nice job changing the subject to "arranged marriage" as opposed to rape and abuse of an 8yr old girl, btw) Define consenting. Consenting as in, "oh thank you papa, you have chosen the man of my dreams! We have been in love for 10 years!" or consenting as in "I submit to my father's wishes." Both are sexist and dehumanizing. Sorry, I have a standard. People have the right to make their own decisions regarding their own body, and their own happiness. Anything else is collectivist bull**** - cultural or historical background is irrelevant.
8 year olds do not have the maturity to consent to be sexed up by an adult. We call that statutory rape in this country.
Yemen is a very, very tribal society. In tribal societies, girls are commonly married at a very young age, be it in Africa or Arabia. In fact, there are villages in Europe to this day that marry their girls off once they're 'of age'...however that's defined. The law on the books in most of those countries prohibits marriage below a certain age (in most countries -- yes, even Arab countries -- it's 16 or over). But in these cases, the state chooses to ignore such practices in tribal areas either due to lack of law enforcement capacity or lack of knowledge/interest in getting involved in 'tribal matters'. But again, it's easier to just feign knowledge rather than dig deeper to understand what's going on. But keep at it...
Wait...this is crappy. I'm sorry, but there are all sorts of bad things that go on in the world...I'm not comfortable excusing them merely because someone might think I'm being culturally insensitive. When you have a situation where the law allows exactly what happened here, then there is a problem. And all the political correctness in the world won't change that. Slaverly was once engrained in the culture of the American South. Thank God we overlooked the cultural sensitivities to knock that crap out.
Political correctness is like outsourced nationalism. It's for pansies to scared to confront injustice.
The problem is that brutal authoritarianism crushes all opposition. Moderate or liberal intellectual forces usually have to emigrate from their countries should they have the courage to speak up. Sure, they could move back, but by then, they discover a nation totally different and a public who don't consider them an authentic native. With the internet and satellite media, it's a fertile soil to grow any crop. But without the right seeds and adequate shelter, all you have are weeds. Political inertia is not on their side, and the situation is so bad that status quo proponents are using that exact excuse. While it sounds like a case for armed intervention, we're like aspirin fighting cancer. Wrong dosage, wrong treatment, and an absolutely wrong diagnosis.
And it should be called rape everywhere. The article says it is called rape in Yemen too. What this "man" did was illegal by our standards and their standards. What was legal, was for her parents to arrange her marriage. The Middle East and Asia practice arranged marriages. 8 year olds are too young to consent and that is wrong but at 16-17-18 I don't have a problem with it as long as the girl consents. Is Olajuwon a pedophile for his arranged marriage with a minor?
There is no political correctness in my post and you completely misunderstood what I was getting it, but I am used to that by now. The 'feign knowledge' part was pointed at those who replied in this thread presuming to know 'why' the 8 year old girl was 'allowed' to marry in the first place. This is precisely why I tried to explain the nature of tribal societies (such as Yemen) where many live in distant, remote villages where they are practically autonomous, and the state has no actual control/authority over them. We've seen this even in remote tribal areas in Pakistan, where the state pretty much has no presence and can't force itself on the tribes in the interest of political expediency. So what I am protesting is those who make the leap of logic from "8 year old in a tribal area married before puberty" to "it must be legal in that damn (insert country/religion here)." In this particular case, Yemeni courts have terminated this girl's marriage saying that it was illegal. The biggest culprit in marrying off pre-teen girls to old perverts is poverty, in fact, it's the only commonality there is. It's no different than child prostitution in Mexico or SE Asia, people the world over are trading in sex/marriage because of the tremendous wealth 'imbalance' and poverty in the world. These stories are not at all uncommon. People who have nothing else are willing to sell their bodies or even their kids as 'sex slaves' (that's what this marriage was, a transaction...nothing more). It's sad, it's wrong, it's abhorable...but the economic reality we live in enables this kind of 'deviant behavior' to take place. So no, I am not excusing it, not even close. But as I've said in the past and will continue to say every time one of these threads pops up, I am FAR more interested in understanding and addressing the underlying 'causes' of this behavior than I am in doing the easy, obvious thing: just denounce it and move on. There is no issue of 'cultural relativity' here, it's plainly wrong to 'sell' your child as a sex slave and it's plainly wrong for a child of this age to get married before at least reaching puberty, which is nature's way of saying "you're physically an adult now."
