Applebees. It’s a sex-trafficking, child rape, groomer sort of place.
« Still?
Old enough to be married & have babies, not old enough to drink
« Still?
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Congratulations, you made family dining establishments even more disgusting than they are. FYI any dining establishment that has a “play area” never cleans ANYTHING in the play area. I worked at a “family friendly” brew pub for years and we never cleaned the toys unless someone broke glass, pissed themselves, or barfed.
Children are literally my kryptonite at this point. “Oh you had a baby! What does it do?” Give me a puppy or kitty any day of the week. Children are gross.
They don’t have a choice in the matter. Both aspects are laws in many states still. Law 1- kids can’t be up at the bar alone. Law 2 – in states that allow underage marriage, facilities can’t discriminate.
Of course, this just gets to the point that the definition of marriage is just something that should not be left to the states at all anymore (which it shouldn’t – we should not have different rights re: the Federal government merely because of the state we live in), but here we are.
I confess that I didn’t see the problem until acroyear’s comment got me to read the sign more carefully, and I noticed “adult spouse”.
I’m sure most people have heard about the pregnant 10 year old girl in Ohio who had to travel to Indiana to get an abortion because all abortions in Ohio are illegal now.
The christofascist Indiana AG is pretending to go after the MD who actually did the abortion. She followed the law and didn’t do anything wrong but he is apparently outraged that…a 10 year old was not forced to give birth. Of course, in a girl that young, a pregnancy will be harmful to both the mother and fetus and can be fatal, but he doesn’t care about that.
Sums it up.
I know we’re all ready to read this sign as extremely creepy, but it’s probably just badly worded. The problem that they have is that there is a discrepancy between most things that are considered “adult” and for which anyone 18 or older is counted as one, like marriage, voting, serving in the military, etc., and drinking, which they are not considered adult enough for. For that you must be 21. So there is a point here where you could have a 20 year old married to a 22 year old (not really creepy) but the 20 year old is still considered under age to be at the bar without their 22 year old spouse. The sign should probably say “a spouse of legal drinking age” to be properly accurate, but that’s also a bit long to fit on a sign. I kind of doubt that the Applebees meant anything more than that or that they are endorsing child marriage.
Of course, we do have the ridiculous situation where a person otherwise considered an adult is barred from legally consuming alcohol, but that’s not their fault.
Say, isn’t “adult spouse” just a euphemism for statutory rapist?
@stwriley: Republicans are working to overturn laws that establish minimum ages for marriage (and consent). So in Tennessee or another state in the not-so-distant future, a 12 year old could enter the bar as long as they were accompanied by their adult spouse.
Back in the Pleistocene (well, okay, it actually would have been 1970 or 1971), I remember sitting at a bar in a very small Nevada casino in a postage-stamp-sized town, while my parents played slot machines and the bartender did duty as a babysitter and gave me orange juice. I would have been 11 or 12. This was early in the morning, and we were waiting for their small restaurant to open for breakfast. There might have been half a dozen patrons in the place, including us.
Not that anyone (including me) didn’t know about the laws regarding minors and bars, or minors and gaming, but I think the establishment encouraged my parents to park me there to keep me away from the slot machines. Other options might result in my parents not gaming at all, and this was a casino! That couldn’t be allowed to happen!
I’m not sure of MO law, but in some states having a baby before the age of 18 automatically makes you an emancipated minor. That doesn’t extend to being allowed to purchase alcohol, but you can play pool in a bar legally.
@7 Actually it is more complicated than that.
A few minutes with Google found that 44 states permit child marriage under some conditions. It varies but sometimes parental consent and sometimes a judge’s consent are needed.
There is a movement in the USA to limit or end child marriage.
It is not going well. For example. Republican Controlled Idaho Congress Rejects Bill to End … https://www.newsweek.com › … › Child › Marriage
Mar 1, 2019 — Idaho legislators rejected a bill that would have blocked marriage for youth under age 16 in the state, The Idaho Statesman reported.
Republicans in Louisiana reject measure setting minimum …https://www.independent.co.uk › World › Americas
Jun 3, 2019 — Republicans in Louisiana’s state legislature are attempting to block a law that would set the minimum age for marriage to 17.The GOP is opposed to raising the age for child marriage.
They also favor making grade school age girls give birth after being raped.
Think there’s a line in the Eve of Destruction song that’s still painfully relevant here. Could be mistaken.
In Tennessee, the christofascist GOP is trying to lower the minimum age of marriage to…zero.
I don’t know why but the GOP always goes for maximum misery so they must think this is going to make some segment of the population worse off.
Or who knows, maybe the old white guys that run the GOP want to marry school age girls without having to worry about the laws.
raven @12: the sponsor of that bill married a girl who’s so much younger than he is that she’s regularly mistaken for his granddaughter. What do you think?
@12
“Or who knows, maybe the old white guys that run the GOP want to marry school age girls without having to worry about the laws.”
Umm…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/woman-says-roy-moore-initiated-sexual-encounter-when-she-was-14-he-was-32/2017/11/09/1f495878-c293-11e7-afe9-4f60b5a6c4a0_story.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Moore_sexual_misconduct_allegations
https://www.cleveland.com/news/2022/07/rape-suspects-arrest-prompts-criticism-of-republicans-like-ag-dave-yost-who-questioned-story-of-10-year-old-who-left-ohio-to-get-an-abortion.html
“the Democratic Party’s candidate for attorney general, State Rep. Jeff Crossman of Parma, issued a statement that said Yost should be “ashamed – not only for calling a 10-year-old rape victim a liar but for helping to create the circumstances that prevented her from getting the critical healthcare she needed in the first place.””
And here is the segment of the populace for whom that Appleby’s sign was really intended for:
https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/equality/3259843-tennessee-bill-would-eliminate-age-requirements-for-marriages/
“The bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Tom Leatherwood (R), has argued that the bill would merely create a new marriage option for Tennessee residents.”
Trying so hard not to vomit.
Missouri is often pronounced mis-ery by the locals. Televangelists are it’s best known export.
And then there’s this:
http://apps.frontline.org/child-marriage-by-the-numbers/
“One of the oldest people to marry a child was a 74-year-old in Alabama. His bride was 14. (The state later raised its minimum marriage age to 16).”
YEAH ALABAMA, THAT’S SO MUCH BETTER. /s
https://apnews.com/article/feb37f70af8d4ae08ff19c7571972599
I’m not convinced that Applebee’s sign is a typo.
This reminds me of a story that my uncle from the USA told me when I was visiting him in 1999. It was about an interview he saw with a US soldier in Iraq. The journalist ended the interview by telling the soldier to go and have a beer with his comrades, to which the soldier replied “I can’t drink beer, I’m not 21”. The number of absurdities in the USA law never ceases to amaze.
Off Topic and I’d be stunned if PZ’s Peanut Gallery hadn’t heard it already but…
Nichelle Nichols, who played Lt. Nyota Uhura on the original “Star Trek,” has died at the age of 89, her son Kyle Johnson announced on her official Facebook page.
“Last night, my mother, Nichelle Nichols, succumbed to natural causes and passed away,” Johnson’s statement read. “Her light however, like the ancient galaxies now being seen for the first time, will remain for us and future generations to enjoy, learn from, and draw inspiration. Hers was a life well lived and as such a model for us all.”
https://comicbook.com/startrek/news/nichelle-nichols-dead-star-trek-uhura/
Re: Charly @ #17..
One of the reasons for lowering voting age to 18 (it was 21 when I was 18) was that if someone was old enough to be in the military and fight for the country, they should be considered old enough to vote in its elections.
For a very long time, minimum age for legally consuming alcohol was decided at the state level. The move to raise it from 18 to 21 was largely driven by the rates of automobile accidents among teenagers who had been drinking. The US has a long history of uneasiness with alcohol.
And yet WE are the ones who groom children, traffic them, etc. Shameless.
Susan@18- Many here probably know the story about how Nichelle Nichols was convinced to stay on the show after the first season by a famous civil rights figure….
@21 Including me ;) Do you think I could be this socially awkward and not be a Trekker?
As someone has noted, the less-creepy explanation is an over-21 married to a (just) under-21, and the sign has used ‘minor’ in the alcohol-license sense rather than the more normal legal sense. Even an over-21 married to a 17 year old is problematic at best…
In Australia the drinking age nationally is 18, same as the voting age, which disambiguates a bit.
There are actually decent medical reasons for delaying access to large amounts of alcohol, though as with most things, education >>> legislation…
There are several reasons why the US drinking age was raised to 21.
Part of it is just statistics.
There was a large number of teenagers dying in automobile accidents after drinking too much.
Part of it was a phenomenon I saw up close a lot during a stay one summer at a university in a state where the drinking age was 18.
It’s hard to tell a 16 year old from an 18 year old. And an 18 year old can buy for all their high school friends who are under 18.
In the evenings in the summer, the average age of the customers in the bars seemed to be around 16. We would be surrounded by what seemed to be a lot of very drunk (older) children.
Raven @12 “In Tennessee, the christofascist GOP is trying to lower the minimum age of marriage to…zero.”
It’s just controlling women. get them married before they can even think of objecting and they can transfer women directly from fathers to husbands.
I’m sure they are already attacking no fault divorce
@11. Think there’s a line in the Eve of Destruction song that’s still painfully relevant here. Could be mistaken.
Yes – you’re old enough to kill but not for voting right at the start of the song at the 23 seconds mark in the hyperlinked youtube clip. Found it.
If memory serves an outside area at a place I go to eat has a sign saying that anyone under 21 must be accompanied by an adult. So I suppose bringing anyone over 18 along has it covered? Maybe age of majority for alcohol consumption is treated differently per adulthood than other activities.
As others have said it could just be a 21 year old married to s 1n 18 year old. That would fill the bill.
I read a book on statistics well over a decade ago, whose title I cannot remember right now, that dealt with the issue of teen/young deaths from drunk driving when the drinking age varied by state. There was apparently apparently a jump in those deaths for any given age group at the age alcohol became legal in any state and then just went back down the next year.
I’m going with “unfortunate word choice” as well. It has the feel of a church sign which says “The faithful come every Sunday”.
I just learned that the current Mayor of Arnhem (in the East of the Netherlands, Ahmed Marcouch, ~an import from Morocco~) lost his mom at a very early age, before he got any recollection of her. She died age 36 having given ten childern the light of day. You do the figures.
It makes cultural relativism a hard problem.
@René
To be fair, that could also happen in your average zwarte kousen family.
Now if this was in West Virginia, I’d understand it. Miners tend to be rather rowdy at bars, and should always have adult supervis… oh, wrong spelling. That’s different.
This irreverent aside brought to you by Monday morning, inadequate caffeination, and the late Alan Rickman (Galaxy Quest, which in turn was a nod to outtakes from ST:OS involving the now-late Nichelle Nichols).
Is that I asius, or L asius? I wouldn’t call it fair. To me it’s a horror scenarion.
Lasius
“I wouldn’t call it fair. To me it’s a horror scenarion.”
It definitely is. I was just trying to say that the Netherlands have their own bible belt where stuff like this regrettably also happens.
Agree that it seems creepy. Also agree that it’s merely trying to be clear since an 18 year old is one kind of adult, but 21 years old is adult enough for booze. Although they could have just said, if you’re not old enough to drink we don’t care if you’re married to someone old enough, you don’t get to sit at the bar.
It’s not that controversial to me – I mean, should we raise the marriage age to 21? We know the sex age is going to be “whenever kids get curious,” no matter what the marriage age is going to be, and I’d never suggest that people shouldn’t have sex without being married.
But marriage is a contractual thing that includes things like limited power of attorney – that’s the whole basis for the marriage equality argument. It really bugs me that we can’t seem to separate the contractual aspect of marriage from the sexual aspect of being human.
Old enough to be married & have babies, not old enough to drink
Here’s another way to think of that: if you can legally marry and start having babies at 18, but can’t legally drink until you’re 21, then that means — in the eyes of the law at least — that your first three years of married life must be alcohol-free. That’s a good rule to have, if you actually get married at the not-so-mature age of 18.
Lasius, I couldn’t agree more. Don’t get me going on our Bible Belt.
I remember “No fault” passing in Kentucky back in the day. My Dad and all his work friends divorced their wives and married their secretaries within a year.
@38. So, hiring a secretary in your old man’s days, is comparable to today’s swiping?
zwarte kousen
Black stockings? I will assume this is code for a religious sect, but that’s all I can glean from the Dutch.
Rene @30,
Well, that’s not necessarily starting to have babies when underage, just a (possibly pathological) commitment to cranking them out as fast as possible. If she’d first gotten pregnant at 18, she would have had to start another pregnancy (on average) every 21 months to have ten children by the time she was 36. While that means she’d have had a 1 year old in the house every time she got pregnant again, that’s at least theoretically possible. Weird by most people’s standards, yeah, but possible without child marriage.