Historically, I thought that marriage at that rather young age was not only leg but encouraged up until less than 100 years ago.
Under Jewish law, a girl was eligible for marriage at 12 1/2 years of age.
Many latino cultures still have Quinceañera celebrations. This is the girl's 15th birthday party and marks her transition from childhood to being an eligible young woman.
So far as I understand, neither culture today encourages such youthful marriages.
That Virginia has only recently considered changing this law to up the official age at which a pregnant girl can marry suggests to me there hasn't been much problem of "underage" marriages. 4,500 girls younger than 18 getting married over a 10 year period is 450 girls a year. I'd best most of them were 17 year old high school graduates (or drop outs) marrying their boyfriends who were no more than a year or two older very quickly after graduation.
A total of 200 girls (or 20 a year in a State with over 8 million residents) were younger than 15. I'm betting mostly gals who got pregnant, had the audacity not to want to just kill their babies, and decided to marry the father instead. Nothing pisses off "pro-choice" advocates like choosing not to abort. Not ideal, but not exactly the end of the world in most cases either. The article points to a couple of cases of an old creep using marriage as a get-out-of-jail card for what would otherwise be statutory rape. Unfortunate, but if he can convince the gal and her parents to marry him, odds are the girl wasn't going to make a great witness at criminal trial anyway. And a small number of guns get used for criminal activity so that justifies banning all guns.
One can only guess at the motivation to even mention this proposed change in law in this forum. But given the OP's history...
Charles
