When I studied abroad in France, I did the classic US American thing and struck up a conversation with the guy stuck opposite of me on the train. He seemed to think that he could offend me by complaining about the US, only for me to do the classic improv thing of going, "yes, and-" and adding onto the complaints with odder ones he hadn't heard before. For instance, leashes for children, the fictionkin subculture (ever told a French man some people think they were Pikachu in a past life? it's wild), and, of course, the existence of Florida. (Cue multiple minutes of looking up Florida + a random word he named and showing him real news stories.)
It was all very chill at this point. Snacks had been bought, silly French news stories had been shared in exchange for silly Florida ones, we were on a first-name basis, and I had shown him a picture of my school's giant fountain in the library full of rubber duckies. We're leaning back, quite casual and comfy, watching the French countryside go by. I tell him about Moth Man, beloved icon of my home state. He thinks I'm shitting him and looks it up, then laughs and sends pictures to his buddies. Oh, people back then were crazy, he jokes, shaking his head in disbelief, eyes glittering with laughter.
Yeah, I say, now we only do some crazy things, like allow child marriage in four states.
I see the laughter slowly die in his eyes as he asks what I mean. Do I mean teenagers? Do I mean 18? What do I mean? I, the son of a pediatric forensic psychologist mom whose whole job is to help kids heal, tell him. I tell him about the four US states where there is no minimum age limit to be married. If you can find a judge to agree to it, you can marry a kid at literally any age. Any age. Yes, theoretically 0. In practice the youngest my mom ever ran into was 10.
Ten. He repeats that several times, slowly. He had leaned forward. Now he leans back, as if in shock. This French man, you see, was considerably older than me. He has children close to that age. He asks me if the marriage is to another child. I explain it's to an adult. The French man rubs at his face, cups his hand over his mouth, settles for a mixture of resting his chin in his palm and covering part of his lower face. With his other hand, he pulls out the phone to fact check me. I am not lying. He puts the phone in his pocket and stares out the window at nothing.
Why, the French man says, with a tone of voice I usually hear people use when talking about war, is this legal? Why is this allowed? Why would a parent allow it, even when it's allowed?
I explain that in some sects of Christianity, having sex out of wedlock is an unspeakably bad sin, even if you're a child, even if you said no, even if you hated it. I explain that statutory rape laws do not apply to a married couple. It saves the girl's honor in the eyes of the Lord and the community, it sets things right, I explain, taking care to add that I'm Jewish and not a part of this particular legal nightmare.
He stares at nothing for a long, long time. There's anger in his eyes but it's the kind born of empathy, the quiet fury that is probably still simmering in him when he remembers this bit of US law. The silence goes on long enough that I worry about how he's processing this. It was always kind of a trivia fact in the US, a little blip. For us it was Tuesday. For him it was high-octane horror beyond his capacity to imagine.
Fuck the US, he eventually told me, he doesn't hate religion but he hates every person participating in this "marriage" (he says while making actual air quotes in sheer disgust). How doesn't it get banned in new laws?
Because Christians, which there are a lot of in the US, vote against banning it when Republicans tell them that keeping it preserves religious freedom. I was suddenly aware, as I said this, that a train car at 10AM is a very quiet place, and people were listening in on this. I can only imagine what they were thinking. My eyes went to a kindly woman in her 60's with flawless dyed blonde hair, who is unnaturally still, to a couple and their baby, who were continually glancing at each other, myself and the baby without a word. Even if they don't like it, I explain, they like Jesus, and they see the people who oppose it as liking Jesus less or not at all.
Jesus, he informs me, never fucking said that [child marriage] was fucking okay and even if he had, it wouldn't be right.
It's not about what's right, I say, as if I'm explaining a thing everybody knows, as if this truth is self-evident, it's about taking a side for the Lord.
He puts his face in both of his hands, looking like a man who has aged a decade in the course of this conversation.
(This map could kill a Frenchman under the right circumstances.)
We need reverse missionaries, and I say that as a person of faith.
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