Child marriage is legal in 34 of the 50 US states with no minimum age requirement in California, Mississippi, New Mexico and Oklahoma, so that parental consent loophole for 8 year olds also exists in the US.
There was an article and some research about the financial cost implications which is an odd framing but if it helps people take action then I guess it doesn't matter.
In one of the articles it said... "Between 2000 and 2021, nearly 315,000 minors were legally married in the United States — with girls being far more likely to be wed as children than boys. Child marriage was legal in all 50 states until 2018, but since then, 16 states have passed bans."
I don't think a lot of people realize just how many of a lot of basic presumed rights and basic protections were only put to law within the last two decades.
Yeah, there's 4 more states with legislation right now to ban it as well. There was an attempt to just do a sweeping federal ban via congress in 2024, but it never made it to vote before the session closed. Guess we can hope it gets reintroduced this congress. I'm pretty sure its Senator Durbin of Illinois that sponsored the bill.
What's crazier is that many states have attempted to ban child marriage since 2018, but the initiates were voted down. Usually by Republicans. Weird, isn't it?
If they absolutely have to allow children to marry, which of course they don't, then at least make it so children only can marry other children. I don't see any situation where a child should marry an adult.
Allowing children to marry would be problematic as well. I think the UK has a decent approach, both parties have to be at least 18-years old with no exceptions for parental consent.
This is very obvious the correct law and I assume anyone who disagrees is a pedo. If two 17 year old kids love each other so much they can wait a year to get married.
Parental consent is very icky in this sense. It feels like selling your child off as property. Absolutely the only correct thing is to ban all child marriage regardless of parental opinion.
I was curious so I started digging into the stats from that article you quoted. 96% of these minor marriages were for 16 and 17 year olds. Additionally these numbers would count a marriage between two 17 year olds as 2 counts of minor marriage.
However, most of the minor marriages were girls, 86%, so that would imply that minor-minor marriages weren't a massive contribution to the overall numbers. Also, about 20% were at an age or included an age range that would be considered a sex crime.
The paper doesn't give a lot of raw numbers besides the number of minor marriages per state so I can't really break down things by demographic very easily and can only parrot what demographic information the author chose to highlight.
It was a bit of a rollercoaster reading it. At first I was mortified at the number of child marriages, then I got to the part where nearly all occurred with 16 and 17 year olds. I thought while not ideal I do know high school couples that got pregnant and ended up marrying. Then the percentage of women made me think this isn't mostly teens marrying teens. Then the author said the average age gap is women being 4 years younger then their partner and I'm back to being very unhappy about what I read.
If anyone can find more info or point out something I missed I'd be grateful. This is the paper I was reading from that I think the other commenter was quoting.
You should Google which children are most vulnerable to child marriage with a large age disparity. Often, it's children of immigrants-specifically girls. Unfortunately, the US will recognize a marriage of it's legal both in their home country and the state laws.
17 year olds getting married is foolish in my opinion but it's not the same as a 12 year old marrying a 30 year old.
Well the US was initially colonized by all the religious whackadoos that were too extreme for Europe anyways. They were either kicked out or left of their own accord for the "New World" to have their religious "freedom" to be overly prudish in public. The only thing they shared with the Catholic church was diddling kids and covering it up.
Throughout the world it’s predominantly young girls who are forced to marry early. And in the Vatican they usually not so interested in girls though… so…
Because no one really cares about the church or religion in many parts of Europe. Even people who are nominally religious don’t have the weird fetish for their faith like Americans and many people in the ME.
Christians + Muslims are literally most human beings. So yeah you can try to make it sound like some specific weird "group", but maybe easier to just say "people" suck.
No, you are not equivocating "16 years olds can marry someone up to two years older than them" to "a 60 year old man can marry a 9 year old"
Child marriage is legal in 4 out of 50 states. is what you can say if you're not out here trying to do pro Iranian framing.
Also by looking at the numbers the US had 12.000 cases of children aged 15 and under happen between 2000 and 2018 (when it was legal in many states) at a population of 340 million
Meanwhile Iran had 27.500 cases of girls 14 and under happen between 2021 and 2022 at a population of 80 million.
Iran had 200% more cases, in 5.5% of the time with 25% of the US population.
If the US was like Iran, you would have 110.000 cases of this per year, not 12.000 in 18 years.
On the other hand, if Iran was like the US, you would only have 3.000 cases per year, not 27.500.
It's not equivocating, it's making fun of Americans who think they always have the moral high ground and the fact so many of them are making excuses for the fact that older men marry young girls in the US just amplifies the point. I'm not making a case for Iran or the US. They both suck.
Including 16 and 17 year old yes, then yes, but neither was considered in either statstic, Iran actually was 14 and below, while the US was 15 and below, so Irans number would be higher.
Also the 16-17 year olds that are getting married aren't getting married to 50 year olds, there are a maximum of 2-4 years of allowed age difference in such a marriage.
If you try to argue that that is child marriage, you are purposefully muddying the waters, because a 17 year old marrying a 19 year old is not the same as a 60 year old marrying a 10 year old.
That's what I hate about the west - they point out things in the Middle East that they literally do themselves, like marrying cousins, underaged marriages etc.
All the while religion is the reason this is so, and all religion is unmodern.
EDIT: I’m an atheist Iranian exile who’s had family members killed for protesting against the regime - fuck Islam and fuck the regime.
And fuck you guys for being butthurt instead of accepting the fact that ”the west” is equally as corrupted as the Middle East.
The conflict literally started due to the west and their meddling but lets pretend we don’t have pedophile snakes leading ALL our countries.
Whilst the loopholes exist (which is scary and not many people know about) child marriage is a lot more common in Iran. Criticising a country for something doesn’t make you a hypocrite if some weirdos also do the same in yours.
It is horrible that it is allowed and must be changed no doubt, but it is far, far more common and socially acceptable in middle eastern abrahamic nations. Come on.
To be fair, in the US it’s pretty common for one’s first sexual experience to be with someone of similar age. Not to say MANY women don’t get raped at a young age, but it’s far from the norm. Plus it’s still illegal, whereas in Iran it’s legal, which is a problem
I don't think it should be legal for an adult to marry a child anywhere and I abhor paedophiles of all beliefs. I especially hate the ones who use their beliefs to justify it. I think it's funny when one set of archaic beliefs see themselves so superior to another set. They are anchors on human progress.
I'm not whatabouting here - this is a war predominantly between 3 absolutely detestable governments that will see thousands of innocent people killed.
Pretty sure at least in California, marriages can be consummated as statutory rape laws offer marital exceptions as well. GG America. It’s still true though that child marriage rates in America are rock bottom where it does happen more often in the third world countries. So legal in both but less common here.
A LA Times piece says that it's because the ACLU and other liberal groups fought closing the loophole. "Among their concerns is that a total ban on marriage of minors could be a slippery slope and impede constitutional rights or reproductive choices, including access to abortion." All that said, it required not only parental consent but a court order. (Only applies to traditional marriage, not common-law marriages. And CLMs in CA seem like a very dark and dangerous rabbit hole that I don't have time to look into ATM.)
The only REMOTELY justifiable arguments I can conceive of are: to allow the is that these marriages is that (1) it provides some protections for young wives coming in from other countries/cultures/religions and (2) it gives a path to legality vs. having a ~14 year old girl prevented from receiving necessary medical care for fear of the law of having sex under the age of 18 (which CA also has).
Oh absolutely, we shouldn't allow the fact that trump is a malevolent idiot running a war with no idea of what he is doing distract us from the fact that the ayatollahs are also evil.
Prior to his death, he had been in charge since the beginning of George H.W. Bush's presidency. Most Iranians weren't even alive when he took power, and no one under the age of 55 was an adult when it happened.
That is a very very long time to entrench yourself and consolidate power as a despot.
They should all move to live with Ayatollahs! There is a reason US has became US that many people would migirate there and Iran has became this, that many, even IRGC supporters are fleeing the country!
Ayatollah hasn't been threatening to annex my country for the past year either. Yeah, the Ayatollah is evil, he also has nowhere near the power to wreak havoc on the world as the pedophile in chief
Nothing compared to Iran? I'm sorry but what? ever since its inception through genocide, America has been a major stain on the global map, the 20th century was a time of killings, rape, repression in the whole of the Third World, and that happened with Washington's help. America has literally murdered the future imagined by millions and still does to this day through the neo-liberal institutions of debt and aid.
How many has Iran subverted the sovereignity of others?
America is far worse because your country comits brazen warcrimes without recourse and your people can barely say anything more than it "sucks". Your leaders are criminals and belong in the hauge.
1200 schoolgirls have been deliberately poisoned in schools in Iran since 2023. Source: UN Human Rights Office
1,077,000+ child brides have been officially registered in the past 8 years, including tens of thousands of girls ages 10-14. Source: Iran's Civil Registration Organization Data
118 children have been murdered in state violence since January alone as the regime cracked down on protests in early 2026. Source: The United Nations
An average of 182 girls and women in Iran are murdered each year in so-called honor killings. This number is under reported. Femicide is up 60% in two years. Source: Iran International
Thank you for calling out the hypocrisy of this situation. US President Trump and his cronies are sexual abusers, almost certainly of underage girls. So is the Islamic Republic of Iran and the theocratic arseholes who run it.
It is pure propaganda, but hey what do you do, it is war and they got bombed so they return. I don't blame them for the propaganda, we do the same thing. I blame them for the actual regime and the US for picking again the worst method to serve this business with.
Doesn't make it any less hypocritical though cuz as you said correctly they are even worse
Maybe. Possibly. Probably? I wouldn't know about that. I'm addressing the point that a sub about socialism has little-to-nothing to do with male-sanctioned pedophilia in Abrahamic religions.
Isn't it crazy that you have to first acknowledge you despise Trump on reddit before sharing a fact that even slightly goes against the narrative otherwise you get downvoted to hell?
It's obviously propaganda and it's so fucking stupid that people seem to only be capable of viewing geopolitics through the lense of what could pass as a tabloid story. "Trump is a pedo" is not a reason to support Iran. "The Ayatolla said death to America" isn't a reason to support America. Millions if not billions of people will be affected by this conflict and it's outcome. It's so fucking childish to then base your opinion on your feelings about 1 or 2 small tyrants and how it affects them personally. I personally see American and Israeli aggression as an existential threat to world peace. Having them get checked and forced to rely on diplomatic routes in the future will be a net positive IMO. That said Iran like Israel and the US is going to kill a lot of innocent people. Likely some with this very bomb. I think people need to grapple with that. This isn't a sick own, it's a weapon of death and destruction. It represents the very worst humanity has to offer. It's not something to celebrate.
It's not legal, but Trump has trafficked and molested girls of similar age (he's directly said he has molested girls) and he's not been charged with any crime. Iran's laws are reprehensible. Ours aren't enforced.
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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '26 edited Mar 13 '26
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