 Let's take some time to talk about the Republican Party in Wyoming. So this party claims to care a lot about parental rights, but at the same time they're doing things that fundamentally undermine parents' ability to make decisions about their own children. For example, they have advanced a bill that bans gender-affirming care for anyone under the age of 18 and classifies that as felony child abuse. Additionally, they passed a bill that would establish a commission that has the authority to ask trans people very personal questions about their body and body parts and the goal of this commission is to limit their ability to play sports. So these are steps that they're taking to protect children, at least that's the pretense that they're using to pass these laws or at least advance these laws at the time that I record this video. You see, you can protect young girls in sports by banning their their trans peers from playing. You can protect children by restricting the ability of parents to make decisions that the experts deem as medically necessary for their trans children. So they claim to care a lot about protecting children. That's the point. But turns out something happened that proves that they don't actually care about protecting children. As LGBTQ Nation explains, Wyoming's HB7 seeks to ban marriages involving anyone under the age of 16 and would allow 16 and 17 year olds to marry with parental consent. Current Wyoming law has no minimum age requirement for marriage. For those under 16, parents must receive a judge's consent. The bill would take away a judge's ability to do so and simply make it illegal for those under 16 to marry. Opponents of child marriage say that it places children at the risk of being victims of violence and robs them of their childhood. They have criticized the Wyoming bill because most child marriages involve girls who are 16 or 17 but some conservatives are opposing the bill for the opposite reason. They believe younger children should be able to get married. A mass email sent Thursday from the Wyoming Republican Party reportedly advocated constituents email their lawmakers to encourage them to not support the bill due to concerns about constitutional rights. The email linked to an analysis of the bill by Capitol Watch for Wyoming families, which argued that since children under 16 can get pregnant, they should be able to get married so their kids can grow up in a stable home. It claimed the bill denies the fundamental purpose of marriage by denying a child's father and mother from living under the same roof. Capitol Watch also claimed the bill is in violation of parental rights and that this arbitrary age is demonstrably higher than the historical norm of millennia of human existence. So these are the folks who claim to care about parental rights, who care about protecting children. These are the same folks who are calling LGBTQ plus people groomers and here they are passionately defending child marriage, rallying their constituents to lobby against this, call their lawmakers and say we don't support this ban on child marriage. We want child marriage and understand that this bill is basically a compromise. Imagine trying to compromise on the issue of child marriage. It doesn't ban marriages for anyone under 18, just 16 and under. But they're not happy with that. Now some additional facts about this bill. It was actually proposed by a gay Republican lawmaker. So he's very clearly trying to do some PR damage control for his party. On top of that, it did pass out of the house by a vote of 36 to 25, which is controlled by Republicans. So there is a little bit of momentum for this piece of legislation. But if you think it's going to pass, that's still up in the air, because according to Newsweek, efforts to raise the age of marriage in the state have consistently stalled for years now retired Laramie Democratic Representative Charles Pelkey sponsored legislation to raise the age of marriage to 18 only to fail with every effort. Now, additionally, Wyoming is one of just eight states in the country, including California, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Washington and West Virginia without a minimum age requirement for marriage. And it currently ranks among the top 10 states in the country for child marriages, according to a 2021 study by advocacy group Unchained at Last. Now, the aforementioned advocacy group that was quoted there Unchained at Last, they say that 97 percent of child marriages include girls between the ages of 16 and 17. And all that this law does is say that you can't marry younger than that. So the bill is essentially window dressing. You're still allowing 16 and 17 year old minors to get married. And Republicans are still very much against it. Why? Well, I mean, maybe it's the principle. They just believe that children should be allowed to get married. And as they make the case, they argue that, well, since you can get pregnant at a younger age, then you should also be able to get married as well. Because, of course, they also don't allow minors to get abortions because that's bad, according to them as well. So they want to force these young girls who are children in some instances to have these babies and allow them to get married. But yet they claim, you know what? If you're under 18, that's too young for gender or family care, even if your parents think it's appropriate and your doctor, more importantly, says that it's medically necessary to reduce depression and suicidality. They're the experts, not the doctors, but they care about protecting children. I love the story so much because it exposes how perverted and disgusting these Republicans are. This was never about children. Everybody knew that that argument was nothing more than a Trojan horse to get people to buy into broader anti-trans and anti LGBTQ plus arguments. But right here, they're showing their cards. And this isn't the first state to try to not only protect child marriages, but go in the opposite direction. Tennessee, for example, you talked about this last year. So I think that child marriages is something that anyone who wants to protect children would be in favor of banning, but not these Republicans. I wonder why, maybe when they call it other people, groomers. Maybe it's just me, but maybe we should consider that more of a confession than an accusation. Up yours, up yours, up yours. Sons of bitches, bitches, bitches. Whoa, more of a whoa, more of a whoa, more of a whoa. I dreamed I saw my maternal grandmother. She was stroking herself absentmindedly. I let her have her way. The genital region was exposed. I let her have her way.