Tomorrow, New Hampshire lawmakers will hear two awful bills — and FFRF Action Fund is asking for your help to stop them.
The House Committee on Children and Family Law needs to hear your opposition to bringing back child marriage and allowing outsiders to challenge what school teachers are allowed to teach. New Hampshire has laws and restrictions in place right now to help keep religion out of the lives of children without their consent, but these bills aim to erode those protections. Don’t wait to fight back!
HB 433 would lower the age of consent for marriage to just 17 under certain circumstances. This opens the door for minors, who lack full legal rights, to be coerced into marriage and become trapped in it since they’re not “old enough” to file for divorce. Oftentimes, this loophole is abused by religious individuals, who pose as evangelical Christian “counselors” to hide their true intentions. Scenarios where children are forced to marry their abusers are straight out of the Old Testament’s Mosaic law. Child marriage was ended in New Hampshire to prevent these exact scenarios, and now Christian nationalists are fighting to get their legal child abuse back.
Additionally, HB 10 seeks to establish a “Parental Bill of Rights” to help parents “direct the upbringing, education, and care” of their children. The uptick in these bills has galvanized some Christian nationalists to scrutinize school curricula. The real problem comes, however, when parents gain unfettered access to their child’s curriculum and start to impact the quality of education that all children receive. Their objections often come from a flawed understanding of what is actually taking place in their child’s classroom. These are the same tactics that groups like Moms for Liberty use to point out small examples of something they deem “questionable” to take swaths of books from school shelves.
Right now is the best chance we have to stop these bills! The House Committee on Children and Family Law is hearing these bills tomorrow, Feb. 18, so please don’t wait to take action! We have included talking points through the “Take Action” button that you can edit to your liking. For best results, please be succinct and polite. For extra impact, you will be directed to a phone script to call legislators after you email them. Please take the extra minute to call them if you can!
(Note: You must live in New Hampshire in order to take part in this action alert.)