Well, yeah. That's sinful! And they're not old enough to make that decision. Best let the husband do the thinking for both of them.

/s

Children’s freedom to marry? How oxymoronic. Might as well argue for selling yourself into slavery as a “pathway to emancipation.”

Or that kids should be able to sell their own organs as a “path to financial independence.”

That's interesting. I almost always side with those two orgs so I'll have to read more about why they take this position. The way you state it sounds pretty bad.

I remember distinctly it was like to be a teenager and realize I was every bit as capable of making rational decisions as the adults around me, and frustrated that it wasn't really recognized. That's not to say it was true for my peers or didn't require being well-informed in the first place. But as a result I'm generally in favor of lessening restrictions on minors where there's no direct harm and raising penalties on adults who manipulate or abuse them. So I'll hold out some hope that these orgs want that but are just communicating it poorly (still a problem, but more easily solved).

I don't disagree with their reasoning. This is an area where we'd want studies to investigate if their argument has merit

I think the data would show the case they're arguing for is uncommon, making it a poor defense of child marriage, but it's good to verify initial feelings with data

I understand both orgs' stances, honestly. I don't think I fully agree with them, but if two 17 year old kids want to marry and have supportive parents, then I'm OK with that. Two 14 year old kids? I'm not OK with that. A 17 and 16 year old? I'm probably not OK with it but could keep an open mind. Not all underage marriages are sex slavery or pregnancy traps or arranged marriages or other harmful situations. The issue is there is not enough white area, too much black area, and very subjective grey area. There is more harm in allowing it and not enough good.

I'm glad CA changed their laws, but I do understand the arguments against it.

Yeah, marriage at 16 with parental consent is pretty commonly allowed throughout the world.

I'll never say no to a map

What's going on with China? Some kind of longitude dependant system?

Shows a map with places allowing to marry children 14 and younger

Marrying 16 year olds is a "worldwide problem.", concludes.

Imagine that you were omnipotent, omniscient, and master of the entire universe. You decided that you were going to give one -- just one -- book to humanity. It would be their moral compass, an insight into their nature and into yours, and act as a guide for how they could live rightly and walk a path that would lead their souls into an eternity with you. Obviously, the first thing you would want to put in there are some totally unscientific, archaic behavioural codes for menstruating women, and for pregnant women after they give birth. You would want to be sure to help them regulate slavery and specify how badly they were allowed to beat their slaves. And of course, you would want the book to be chock full of mythology -- a creation myth, a flood myth, a fictional exodus, and hagiographical stories about how your loyal armies killed the shit out of everyone who dared to worship the wrong gods. There is a point here about the Bible that, in any estimation, really cannot be understated: there is absolutely nothing in the Bible that could not have been simply made up by Bronze-Age human beings. Nothing at all. There are no profound scientific insights that such cultures could never have known. There is some bogus cosmology, a flat Earth, and instructions for how to slaughter animals among other profound insights. Now, some Christians are keen to point out that the Jews did apparently get some things right. They had “Imagine that you were the perfect, omnipotent, all-knowing Lord and Creator of a sanitation system... but so did ancient Egypt, the Hittites, the Elamites, and the Aegean civilization. So, big whoop. They also had some codes for cleansing themselves after handling dead bodies or people with leprosy, but these rituals also included ritual animal sacrifice. Not exactly innovative. Moreover, the rituals themselves were stupid -- after handling a corpse, for example, you would be "unclean for seven days" [Numbers 19:11]. This obviously had little to do with hygiene. Then we have the New Testament. Written by anonymous authors decades after the events purportedly happened and filled with internal factual contradictions, with no trace of the original manuscripts and thousands of copies rife with errors, there is nothing about the New Testament that demands that a rational person should believe it to be divinely inspired. I challenge Christians to show that the evidence demanded that we believe the supernatural claims of the Bible are anything more than made-up. There is simply no reason whatsoever for any rational person to make such an assumption. Is the Bible really the best God could do? Is this book of myths, scientific blunders, and ambiguous or even downright demonstrably bogus historicity really what anyone really thinks the omnipotent Lord of the universe would bestow upon humanity? That this God would ignore humanity for the bulk of its 200,000+ years on the Earth, only deciding to reveal his One True Religion to a small, mostly illiterate Bronze Age tribal culture? Think of all the things the Bible could be if it were really divinely inspired. Think of all the knowledge and insight such a holy book could contain that simply could never have been made up -- profound scientific insights, timeless moral instruction, and revelation clear enough to prevent the innumerable schisms in Christian theology over fundamental issues, like how to attain salvation. Any sane, rational view of the Bible shows it to be little more than the confused scribblings of ignorant Bronze or early Iron Age tribes.

A comment here https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladviceofftopic/comments/8ouarp/do_statutory_rape_laws_apply_in_the_united_states/

Says that marital rape is illegal everywhere while it does exempt statutory rape in some places. If true:

To have a reasonable discussion about the topic, one must be able to rationally discuss that statutory rape is rape between consenting people where one party is considered unable to consent due to law. Marriage acts as exempting the inability to consent, making it legal.

For that to stand during a marriage, both parties must still consent, else it's illegal marital rape.

One can argue that someone under 18 should never be able to lawfully consent, but the reality is people under 18 are constantly choosing to have sex, so a non-nuanced ban doesn't reflect reality.

Hard lines are always nonsense, as 17.99+18 being hard illegal and 18.0+55 being totally fine, is also nonsense. So what is a good solution that protects the people who need to be protected and allows the people who want and should have their freedom? Probably isn't one.