An ode to Garth Brooks, courtesy of Oklahoma leaders’ ban on child marriage

As Oklahoma House lawmakers blathered on in their ridiculous discussion justifying why children should be allowed to marry, the Garth Brooks’ hit “Unanswered Prayers” flashed through my head.

In the country song, Brooks, an Oklahoma native, croons about a man running into an old high school flame at a football game. He reveals that he had once wanted to be with her “for all time” and had prayed to God to make it happen. But now seeing her all those years later, he realizes they weren’t compatible after all and is thankful that the good Lord didn’t answer his prayers. Because, as he put it, “some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.”

Most Oklahomans likely realize with time that they’re completely different than they were when they were in high school, and it’s a no-brainer to require children to wait until at least 18 before they can legally say “I do.” 

After all, ours is a state whose leaders don’t let children divorce, vote, drink, smoke, serve on a jury, or enter into any contracts. Children often can’t even see a doctor without parental permission.

Yet Oklahoma has long had one of weakest childhood marriage laws in the nation. Our state allows children from birth to 16 to wed adults if there’s a judge crazy enough to sign off on it. We allow 17-year-olds to marry with parental permission.

So like the character in Brooks’ song, I found myself saying a prayer to the good Lord when Republicans began moving a bill through the legislative session that would ban anyone under 18 from marrying — for any reason.

I figured the prayer would be sorely needed because our state leaders have long proven themselves resistant to the findings of reputable social and scientific studies, and women’s rights. 

What a pleasant surprise to find the Senate no longer lives in the 17th century by unanimously advancing it.

But before I could get too comfortable, a plethora of state House Republican lawmakers demanded that we should all hold their beers while they piled out of the crazy clown car en masse.

Parental rights, the Republicans crowed. Babies born out of wedlock, they complained. It amounts to government interference, they lamented. It’s the end of the creation of stable families, they whined. Their best friend’s mother’s sister’s cousin’s dogsitter proved it could work, so it could work for us all, they insisted.

Alas, this may confuse the Neanderthals who dwell in our House chamber and deter them from their mission to continue to allow pedophiles permission to prey on children. But here are some facts about child marriage: 

• Children who marry before 18 suffer higher rates of sexual, physical, emotional and financial abuse.
• Oklahoma is among the states with the highest number of per capita child marriages. 
• Laws enabling child marriage shelter child predators who would otherwise be charged with statutory rape.
• The United Nations classifies all childhood marriages as forced unions.
• And there’s a growing number of Legislatures across the country that have acknowledged that children should not be allowed to marry until they’re 18. 

A study by Unchained at Last, a nonprofit focused on ending forced childhood marriages, found that in the U.S. almost 315,000 marriages involving children as young as 10 — most of them girls married to men — occurred between 2000 and 2021.

Gross.

Thankfully, our children had thoughtful Republican legislators like Reps. Nicole Miller, of Edmond, and Tim Turner, of Kinta, to fight for them. 

Turner pointed to the fact that children who marry are less likely to finish high school. They’re more likely to live in poverty and wind up homeless. (Their children are then more likely to perpetuate that cycle. All have worse health outcomes, which strain state services.)

Miller argued it would not hurt a child to wait until 18 to marry if it saves them from a lifetime of regret or gives them a bit more time to ensure those taking their vows are truly ready.

Despite Miller and Turner’s support, the measure escaped bondage in the House by only a single vote after other Republican legislators — including two vying to become our next lieutenant governor (Justin Humphrey and Brian Hill, we’re looking at you) — voted against the ban.

Then it limped across the finish line after another Republican, Gov. Kevin Stitt, showed his own cowardice by refusing to sign it without explaining why. He let it instead become law without his signature, which is his sign that he doesn’t think a bill will move the state forward.

Sigh. I guess these Republicans don’t want policies in our state that empower children to stay in school, reduce the dependence on our Medicaid system, help promote economic prosperity, enter healthy relationships and leave abusive ones.

Fortunately, starting in November, Oklahoma will become the 17th state to ban childhood marriage. Even without them.

It will give children statewide the chance to learn for themselves that “some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.”