An Indonesian district government appears to have come up with the simple solution for young couples who taking the dating game a little too far: force them to get married if they are “dating” after 9 p.m. The government seems less concerned with the fact that couples are together after dark, and more concerned with sex out of wedlock, a long taboo topic for many developing countries.
Apparently, community and government leaders believe that if young couples aren’t together after dark, authorities won’t have to worry about them working on their “night moves.”
In order to ensure that the ban is enforced, the local government has threatened to cut off funding and aid to any of the 200 villages under its authority that does not enforce the new rules. Apparently, the ban was actually based on similar measures already taking place in one of the villages, and is now being expanded district wide.
Further, the ban was unanimously approved by representatives from all 200 of the villages, so support for the measure appears to be high. It should be noted that the story has been reported by only one major international news website, the Daily Pakistan, and has not yet been verified.
Still, while the story may sound outlandish to some, in a world filled with child marriages, the buying and selling of spouses, and complete bans on men and women even being together, this scenario isn’t so hard to believe.
Nor are fully developed countries immune to such heavy handed measures involving marriage. Only a few weeks ago a judge in Texas forced a young couple to get married, or the soon- to-be husband would have been sent to jail.
