North Star Writers Group

We now know that the website is not what it purports to be at first blush. It isn’t an online yenta, connecting parents who “follow the Biblical tradition of arranging marriages” to would-be husbands willing to pay big bucks for their child brides.

Instead, it is the brainchild of John Ordover, a Brooklyn, N.Y., marketing consultant. He developed and on Sept. 4 launched the hoax website after meeting a small group of women – now in their 30s and 40s – who were married off very young.

Ordover says the women asked him for a way to promote the message that many states allow girls to marry at an age when they cannot legally vote or even drive. He says their experiences left them with emotional wounds, and to protect themselves, their children and their families, the women involved are not willing to be interviewed.

“I consider it more of a viral political statement,” says Ordover, who charged his unusual clients $900.00 to cover his costs but nothing for his time. He is now asking that site visitors lobby their state legislators to change marriage laws.

“That children can marry down to 12 years old in America, which they can do, is not right,” Ordover says in a draft of a statement slated for posting on the site Tuesday. “That the age of consent is higher than the age of marriage is not right. That parents can marry off their children for money or for any other reason is not right. Railing about it on the web, as many do, wasn’t making a difference. Thinking outside the box led us to MarryOurDaughter.com.”

Ordover also employed a fascinating approach to touch off this frenzy of interest. How? By posting comments against the site under assumed names on half a dozen web sites where he knew that the regulars would take offense at the very idea of arranged marriages for underage girls. He cites a memorable response to one posting: “’This is the most disgusting site I’ve ever seen on the Web. I’m going to tell all of my friends about it.’”

What that statement reveals about the state of our national psyche is none too flattering. For starters, we can be easily manipulated – especially online, where it’s very difficult to assess context because we cannot see a person’s face or hear a person’s voice.

Second, and much more important, we are only too eager to share our indignation with everyone possible, while any goodwill we might feel or decency we encounter languishes in obscurity.

“It’s easier to motivate by outrage than it is by good intentions,” Ordover observes wryly.

What on earth is going on here? Are we too cynical by half? Do we fear being played for suckers if we reveal that there’s something in this world we actually like? Is kindness no longer cool?

This situation has to be the definition of hell.

As long as we fear being taken for fools, we will remain fools, unable to distinguish between the imposter and the genuine article thanks to our lamentable lack of familiarity with the latter – in others, and in ourselves.

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