Practicalthought? If you're talking about a 95-year-old man marrying a 7-year-old girl in Yemen, I hear you loud and clear and I'm all on board with you. However, whenever anyone hears about a teenage minor marrying someone slightly older than American society may approve of here in the United States, I think a lot of people have preconceived notions about it.
When I was working at a social services agency at the front desk, I met a 33-year-old customer whose wife was 22 years old. He was from Utah and he had been married to her for 10 years. They had a family and they were happy. I later told this one African customer about them. She smiled at me and stressed in the form of a question that they were still married. I replied, "Yes." Then she spoke about some teenage punk that had gotten her 13-year-old daughter pregnant and how she wanted to kill him.
The United States has such a major problem with deadbeat teenage fathers younger than 18 years old wreaking havoc on underage girls' lives insofar as I don't understand why anybody needs to be concerned about a 15-year-old girl marrying her 23-year-old boyfriend if all the telltale signs are there that she is going to be happy with him.
I mean, if child advocates are really concerned about the safety of teenage minors here in the United States, we need to get strong laws on the books to stop judges from throwing teenage minors into adult correctional facilities with career rapists and murderers.
Child advocates should also be fighting for forced heirship laws. Of course, they're not, because there's nothing in it for them, or so they believe. I would not doubt that many homeless people come from wealthy families in which their parents beat on them and eventually disinherited them.
Sorry for making this so long, but I just want everyone to see the bigger picture instead of always getting one side to this topic.