On Child Marriage Discourse in Trinidad and the Inseparability of Church and State
What is going on in this country? I’m left asking this question after a highly visible back and forth regarding child marriages seized the country.
To quote a recent article in The Guardian TT: “The Marriage Act which governs civil and Christian marriages and sets the age of consent at 18 for males and females. The Marriage and Divorce Act which governs Muslim marriages and divorces and sets the age of consent at 16 for males and 12 for females. The Hindu Marriage Act which sets the age of consent at 18 for males and 14 for females. However, provisions are made for persons under these set ages to be contracted in marriage with consent. The Orisha Marriage Act which sets the age of consent at 18 for males and 16 for females.”
So: I am to understand that in the year 2016 in a secular, democratic republic, the legality, stipulations and recognition of marriage lays squarely in the hands of the religious communities. The state manages matrimony after the fact, but communities of faith act as the primary authorities with regard to setting police and procedure.
Is this really what we’re doing?! Beyond being simply ridiculous domestic policy, I hold this practice to be dangerous. My outrage at this fact is rooted in the fact that we want to be a modern state seen as a bearer of human rights, yet we uphold policies where oppression could easily be hidden. Twelve-year old girls, who are too young to be allowed to vote or run for political office, are being married off in Trinidad and Tobago. Twelve year old girls, who are too young to see R-rated movies, are being coerced into marital sex. Twelve year old girls who are too young to buy alcohol, are being forced to bear children and endanger their mental and physical well-being. I could go on, but I think Sanatan Amilcar hits the absurdity of the issue on the head in his interview with Hema Ramkissoon on “The Morning Brew.”
What I’m interested in doing is analyzing the response and the lack of response to the allowance of child marriages. In the past three weeks as this discussion has been raging on, prominent members of the religious community have spoken out both for and against keeping the law that permits such practices. Those supporting it cite religious freedom concerns that, eerily enough, mimic the religious freedom discourse in the United States at the moment. Even some outside the religious community have suggested that the law remain intact on the grounds that it’s only a “small percentage” of child marriages that occur in the country these days in any case and thus the issue itself is negligible. Most notably, the head of the IRO demanded that the government not interfere with Hindu tradition, sparking a slew of responses from religious leaders in Trinidad. The conversation is currently being well-documented in our local and in some international media outlets.
My question to them is: what gives them the right to speak on public policy? Who cares what they have to say? Why does the fundamentally moral and theological conversation taking place among the interfaith community in TT have such marked implications for our legislative sphere? What does that say about how we arrange our society? Now I didn’t do any research into whether any of these clergymen (MEN!) are also moonlighting as legal scholars, but the fact remains that their authority to speak comes from their position as spiritual leaders.
I want to use this as an opportunity to interrogate the cultured power that is given to these men and less about how they are using their cultured power. Our Prime Minister has been remarkably tepid in his response to this issue. The silence from Keith Rowley's administration on his thoughts is deafening, and the possibility of appropriate action on his part is not looking promising. Wow. Is he so afraid of getting in the cross-hairs of our Pharisees? This is a secular, democratic republic that also happens to be a multi-cultural island nation! My expectation would be a cleaner separation of church and state. The absurdity that we would actually consider inaction on statutes that perpetuate child rape on the grounds of religion demonstrate the power that the faith communities wield in our country and spark an imperative to erode that power. If we can’t get through common sense legislative measures regarding the end of the coerced marriage of 12-year-olds, then what hope do we have for marriage equality, or for reasonable access to reproductive healthcare, or common sense drug policy? If THIS is the choke hold religion has on Trinidad and Tobago, we’re doomed.
