Wednesday, September 19, 2007

marry our daughter

If you looked at the website's front page when it was live, it looked pretty real. The girls were as young as 14 and ranged in price from $20K to over $100K!

Even Michael K was fooled, until he looked further at the testimonials on the site - purely a work of fiction ... or at least we would hope they were...

"I was SO scared getting married so young, but my husband is an okay guy and I am SO proud that because of me my parents were able to get their first brand-new car and take a the trip they always wanted to. I couldn't have done it without your site!" - Katrina K., married at 14

"Our 15-year old daughter Mary wasn't very popular and did nothing but mope around the house bringing everybody down, so we decided to marry her off through your site. Now our house is a lot cheerier and we love our new swimming pool and Jacuzzi! We've told our youngest that when she turns 15 we're going to marry her off too!" -Mrs. James P.


In addition, the site's "publicity director" even went on several radio stations across the country pretending the site was real ... and even fielded questions from pissed-off DJs and listeners.

This is the real scary part - the site got over 20 million hits in a couple of weeks, however, it also received thousands upon thousands of angry e-mails, reports Dlisted.

In any case, John Ordover, the site's creator, spoke to The New York Times and admitted that he created the fake sit to prove inconsistencies in state marriage laws. Although states consider it illegal for adults to have sex with kids, however, they allow kids as young as 12 to marry with permission. "As far as I can tell, in every state but Oregon, parents can marry off their children," he said.

So, rest assured, the site is fake - but it is scary to think that some sicko parent can legally marry off their kid! And, if you think there aren't some sicko parents out there, you're fooling yourself!
I think the entire DollyMix staff breathed a sigh of relief when we found out the Marry Our Daughter was a fake site after all. The site that Cate dubbed "pimp my dowry" featured pictures of inoffensive looking young women and girls and a short blurb about themselves. Search the site and you can find such gems as "Courtney's grandmother married at 13, her mother married at 13, and Courtney has decided she wants to keep the tradition going." With prices ranging from $3,995 to approx $80,000 there's obviously something for everyone.

Site creator John Ordover explained that the websites purpose was to draw attention to inconsistencies in state marriage laws. States consider it a crime for adults to have sex with minors, but they allow children as young as 12 to get married with parental and sometime judicial permission. "As far as I can tell, in every state but Oregon, parents can marry off their children," Mr. Ordover said, pointing to a Cornell University Web site which tracks the various state marriage laws. It says a lot about how we view Americans (Cate is a Yank btw) that we believed the site was real...Only for about 25 mins mind!

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home