this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2025
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Political Weirdos

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In a now deleted tweet, weirdo Azealia Banks shares that "fucking 14 year old girls was really only made a social taboo in the 1990s" (infosec.pub)
submitted 6 days ago by bytesonbike@discuss.online to c/political_weirdos@lemmy.world
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[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 13 points 6 days ago (3 children)

Child marriage was legal in all 50 states until 2018. Since then, 16 states have passed bans, and advocates continue to push lawmakers to end the practice.

10 states have a minimum marrying age of 17; 20 states have a minimum age of 16; two states have a minimum age of 15; and four states don’t have a minimum age specified at all.

So it's not really illegal. You just need to be married first.

[–] JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Marriage doesn't change age of consent.

[–] TonyTonyChopper@mander.xyz 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I think in several states you CANNOT prosecute your husband, regardless of the other laws

[–] JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 0 points 5 days ago

That's only because they considered marriage implied consent. Statutory rape doesn't consider consent since the victims cannot legally give it. So it only would apply to general rape laws.

Also, that hasn't been true for more than 50 years. Every state has marital rape laws.

[–] misteloct@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 days ago

He didn't marry any of them.

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world -1 points 5 days ago

I'm not going to bother to explore what the pre-2018 laws were, but even for a lot of the laws where underage people are still allowed to marry, 14 is still younger than age of marriage in general.

And this is separate from age of consent. The four states that have no specified minimum marriage age have age of consent at 16 or 18, so technically you can be married but not having sex. Being a child spouse even without the sex part is screwed up, so it's a somewhat related, but different concern to this discussion.

Incidentally 'technically' is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Someone under the age of 18 needs at least parental approval in those four states, and even in the worst of those cases if someone is under 15, a judge has to get involved and explicitly approve the marriage as well as parents. So again, a 14 year old getting married? In theory possible but unlikely even in the few states where it is technically legal.

In short, yes, it was broadly illegal, with some states giving green light at 16, and under more select circumstances earlier (I see the wikipedia table goes as low as '13' 'by age', but unrestricted only goes down to 16. I don't quite understand what the 'by age' and 'by authority' columns even mean, but I'll assume 'unrestricted' is at least where you don't need to find a weird loophole.