As the late, great Paul Harvey was fond of saying, it's not one world. What's more, it never has been. Take marriage, for example; right here in the United States, not all that long ago, people typically got married younger than they do now. Girls as young as 15 were married, although generally to young men only a few years older. Even in the 1970s, people typically got married in their late teens or early 20s; of my three buddies and me that I ran with in junior high and high school, all four of us were married within a year of graduating.
But things change, and more current sensibilities look down on that sort of thing. But there are segments of the American population, right now, who are still marrying off girls, and some a lot younger than 15. And, oddly, child marriage is something where the law, in most of the United States, has lagged behind society. That may be changing now.
Organizations that have been advocating to end child marriage in the U.S. are actively seeking Republicans in Congress and state legislatures to support ending the practice. They argue the issue is nonpartisan and children, especially girls, should be protected.
So far, only Democrats in Congress have sponsored the Child Marriage Prevention Act. It was first filed in 2024 and recently refiled by U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-IL, with Sens. Brian Schatz of Hawaii and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York as cosponsors. U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, D-WI, filed companion legislation.
The bill is the first concerted effort by Congress “to condemn and prevent child marriage domestically,” the Tahirih Justice Center says. It and other survivor-led organizations have been advocating to end the practice.
Interestingly, this bill has been written, sponsored, and co-sponsored by Democrats, and they are looking for Republican supporters, even though marriage is typically a matter for the states. And, properly, this is where the states should be acting.
Advocacy groups are calling on state legislatures to enact a minimum age requirement of 18 for marriage with no exceptions and for Congress to act.
The District of Columbia and 17 states have enacted such a ban: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington. Oklahoma was the latest to do so this year. Its new law goes into effect Nov. 1.
Child marriage remains legal in 33 states: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
Here's the thing: While we still have the ridiculous graduated age of majority, in which one can sign a contract or join the military at 18 but not drink a beer until 21, for most things, 18 does indeed apply. One can sign a contract at 18. Marriage is, in part, a contract. So, it seems logical that the age when one can marry should likewise be 18. But it's the states, not Congress, that should be making this a matter of law.
There is, though, some urgency in this matter. The elephant in the room now, as is happening more and more, is Islam. In Islamic societies, it's not uncommon for girls as young as 10 to be married off to older men, sometimes much older, and that's utterly unacceptable. But when you have a fundamentalist, 7th-century religious-social system whose founder married a nine-year-old, that's hard to shake off.
That is the thing that the several states will have to address, and the sooner, the better.
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