Persuasive Speech On Child Marriage

While confined here to the town of South Carolina, I came across the laws for child marriage that vary from state to state. Rarely do I pause to address ridiculous individual state laws. If I sought to fight every ridiculous law I ran across, I would be fighting for minors to be able to play pinball and I would have no time for real issues. But since I feel you are a body of educated individuals who will rectify the issue, I want to try to appeal to your
I think I should indicate why I am writing. We have the privilege of living in America,"the land of the free and the home of the brave." However, the bravest ones happen to be the 200,000 children- some as young as 10 years old- married here in the past 15 years (Baynes). Seventy-seven percent of these children were minor girls marrying adult men with age gaps that constitute statutory rape (Shocking statistics). These girls are forced to abandon their childhoods to take on the roles of wife and mother. Across most of the United States, the minimum age for marriage is 18, but the current state jurisdiction has exemptions that make it possible for young children to wed. Additionally, I am speaking out against these

Martin Luther King Jr.: "...freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed." This is a demand for the freedom of the victims of child marriage since they can not demand it for themselves. Frankly, I have yet to engage a law that is not ‘controversial’ in the view of those who value tradition over all else. For years now, teenagers have been taught to fight against oppressors. Still we hear the older generations cry "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every teenage activist with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We cannot “Wait” to pass the Child Marriage Prevention Act as it would "clarify the definitions of certain terms relating to marriage under Federal law to prevent child marriages" (H.R.