John McGuire

Brigitte Combs, whose mother had tried to give her away in marriage at the age of 11, finally was forced into marriage at 14, to a 37-year-old man with an 11-year-old son, has been working with several girls’ and women’s rights groups to persuade states to raise the minimum marriage age to 18.

Her work as an advocate came about by chance.

Combs has lived all across the United States, but she settled in the Richmond suburbs a few years ago, and when she came across the news that the Virginia General Assembly, in 2024, was taking up legislation to raise the state’s minimum marriage age from 16 to 18.

“I didn’t intend to become an advocate, but now I work to end this practice in other states and support other survivors,” said Combs, whose work in the effort to end child marriage began with her reaching out to state lawmakers to lobby them on the bill being marked up in the General Assembly, and testifying, nervously, in front of a State Senate committee.

The bill would eventually pass the House of Delegates, by a party-line 55-42 vote, and then the State Senate, by a 39-1 vote, with the one “no” vote in the State Senate sticking out like a sore thumb.

“I will never forget the day I watched the full Senate floor live feed to see the vote from my kitchen, and that board lit up green, everyone in support, except for one, John McGuire,” Combs told me.

Combs reached out to us because we’ve highlighted the issue being raised by McGuire’s opponent for re-election to the Fifth District congressional seat, Tom Perriello, who has been critical of McGuire’s “no” vote on the Virginia child marriage bill.

The Perriello campaign has been hitting McGuire hard on the issue with a series of TV spots featuring a young girl sitting on her bed, surrounded by stuffed animals and a soccer ball, thousand-yard-staring into the abyss, as the narrator informs us, regarding his support for underage marriage:

“She doesn’t have a vote to stop Congressman McGuire yet, but we do.”

Per reporting from Dogwood, McGuire tried to rationalize his “no” vote on the bill by saying, to a constituent in Prince Edward County who’d asked at a campaign event earlier this year:

“If a young man and a young girl get pregnant, they need to have a marriage,” said McGuire, who is clearly feeling political heat on the child marriage issue, because amid the controversy stirred up by the TV spots, he took to his socials to try to explain himself a second time – this time, testing out a new rationale.

“My nephew just completed boot camp at age 17. Over 200,000 members of our military under age 18 fought in World War II. A 17-year-old can enlist, deploy, and die for this country. Under the bill Perriello is attacking me on, that young man couldn’t marry his 17-year-old fiancée so she could receive full survivor benefits if he didn’t come home. I wasn’t willing to strip that option from those families. I asked for the exception, and the Democrats refused,” McGuire explained.

That one does sound slightly better than, girl pregnant, she needs to get married to the guy who knocked her up.

“Now he is trying to use the military as a reason it should be allowed, saying 17-year-olds may deploy and should be able to marry for benefits. A 17-year-old may enlist in the military with parental consent, but they are still forbidden from being entered into combat and are restricted in other ways,” Combs notes. “There are also some different benefits still available. They are still not able to vote, serve on a jury, buy alcohol or tobacco. It is also not intended to be a lifelong contract with the same ramifications as marriage.”

Forcing a pregnant teen girl to marry the “young man” on the other side of the equation also has lifelong ramifications.

“A pregnant teenager needs support, medical care, education and protection, not pressure or shame,” Combs said. “Marriage should not be used to make a pregnancy appear respectable or to preserve family honor. If the relationship is healthy and genuine, it can wait until both people are adults. If it cannot wait, that is precisely when we should be concerned.

“A court order should not transform a child into an adult for purposes of marriage. Nor should it allow an adult to become the legal spouse of a minor. Marriage can create dependency, restrict a young person’s options, and make it more difficult to identify or escape coercion, abuse, trafficking or exploitation,” said Combs, who has lived this story.

She was able to escape her first marriage, with two young children, at 18, but in the course of doing so, ended up in a second exploitative relationship that ended after 11 years and four more children.

Combs has now been happily married to her third husband for 22 years. She has six grown children, the oldest, 42, the youngest, 27.

And she’s now an advocate on the front lines of the effort to end child marriage.

“Until 2018, every state allowed child marriage through legal loopholes and exemptions, many states had no minimum age. As of two weeks ago, 18 states have banned all child marriage. Thirty-two to go,” Combs said.

Her advocacy started by accident, but the effort in Virginia ended with success.

She still remembers the emotion that swept over her as the votes were cast in the State Senate.

“I was overcome with tears that it had passed the Senate, for myself, for all my fellow survivors, and in relief for children of Virginia, that this would be one less harm that could be done to them,” Combs said.

One other thing will stick with her from that day.

“I will also never forget how John McGuire voted,” Combs said.

Chris Graham is the founder and editor of Augusta Free Press. A 1994 alum of the University of Virginia, Chris is the author and co-author of seven books, including Poverty of Imagination, a memoir published in 2019. For his commentaries on news, sports and politics, go to his YouTube page, TikTok, BlueSky, or subscribe to his Street Knowledge podcast. Email Chris at [email protected]. Support AFP by signing up for our newsletter and/or powering our work with a one-time or monthly contribution.

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