I don't get how child marriage can be legal. Like, yeah, they get permission from their parents. But does the fact that they're married negate other laws??? I mean, it's still rape. It's still like child abuse. Does marriage = emancipation?
I'm not talking about older men here.
I'm saying that we need to be careful to avoid creating harm where there was none.
Our "justice" and "health" systems in New Zealand can cause lifelong harm to kids by black-and-white following the rules (at best, because wisdom is difficult or caring is risky).
Tht article doesn't mention the majority of those marriages between 17 year old female "children" marrying male "adults" (that are 18, 19 or 20 years old).
Children versus adults is a common framing, that is repeated by even the less biased sources such as the BBC or PBS: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/interactive/child-marriag...
Crossing a legal line from a "child" of 17 to an "adult" of 18 doesn't have the implications about real world differences in wisdom we might hope for.
If you bucket all the marries this law would affect, the 50 year old marriage is a far outlier. Most of the marriage gaps for these minors are < 1-2yrs.
im not in support of under-18s getting married, but, what?
and, as far as i am aware, it requires judicial approval right now. presumably, if it were a case constituting statutory rape, the marriage wouldn't be signed off.
this isn't about 9 year olds getting married to 30 year olds.
That being said, the law makes an exception for married couples.
okay, so we're back to marriage != rape.
If anyone is curious, the age of consent in the US is 18 in 11 states: Arizona, California, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, North Dakota, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
It is 17 in 6: Colorado, Illinois, Louisiana, Missouri, New York, and Texas.
In the other 33, and also DC, it is 16.
It's interesting to compare to Europe. There it is:
18 in 3 (Vatican City, Turkey, Malta)
17 in 2 (Cypress, Ireland)
16 in 20
15 in 12
14 in 14
meanwhile in the real world, 60% of men under 30 are single vs 30% of women, because women overwhelmingly prefer older men and men overwhelmingly prefer younger women.