I hear people saying they want to adopt it as quickly as possible. I haven't even heard clearly what we're trying to address with this amendment, but if it's to create some great loophole that because someone is pregnant or living common law that somehow this is exempted, I don't think that's going to be accomplished with further discussion without completely gutting the intent of the bill.
It's our intent to draw a line, and I don't see how you can have a marriage exemption that would retroactively protect someone from a criminal charge, number one. Number two, if someone is already married, it means they're in compliance with the marriage laws. They've been legally married; they're protected. They won't be legally married otherwise. You can't just get married on your own.
I think they're taking a very complicated approach. I think people have it in their mind that there are some things they don't like, which is the scenario with the 50-year-old and the 15-year-old. We don't like that; we all agree. There are some times when it's a 21-year-old and a 15-year-old, and they're married. Maybe that's not so bad, but that can't be accomplished without bringing in all the others.
Unless you want to change the close-in-age exemption or some other thing, what Mr. Comartin is trying to accomplish cannot be done without substantially gutting the bill. The bill is designed to protect people under 16 from being preyed on by people who are more than five years older than they are. And telling them to just enter into a common-law relationship or just get married and we will retroactively protect them from a criminal charge is not the message we want to send. I just don't see how it would be accomplished otherwise.
So I don't support the amendment and I really don't support much further discussion on what would really gut the bill if we're going to steer people into common-law relationships to protect them from criminal charges.