By signing a bill last month that abolished child marriage, Gov. Glenn Youngkin made Virginia one of only a dozen states to prohibit the practice and the first Southern state to do so.
That’s a landmark for the commonwealth, one that should have earned unanimous support in the legislature. Those who voted against, including three Republicans from Hampton Roads, should account for their opposition.
As recently as 2017, child marriage, or marriage before age 18, was legal in all 50 states. It remains legal in 38 states — four of which have no legal age minimum — and nearly 300,000 children as young as 10 were married in the U.S. between 2000 and 2018 — mostly girls wed to adult men, according to research from activist group Unchained At Last.
Virginia sparked the national movement to end child marriage in 2016, when the Tahirih Justice Center, a national, nonprofit organization, championed a reform that made this the first state to limit marriage to legal adults — age 18, or minors emancipated through a special court proceeding. The impact was immediate and significant: 87% fewer minors were married in Virginia in 2017 after the law passed.
The new law removes the provision about emancipated minors — children younger than 18 no longer bound to the authority of a parent or guardian. While legally considered adults, they are no longer eligible for marriage until they turn 18.
“This is a momentous day for children in the commonwealth, who no longer have to fear the threat of a forced child marriage,” said Casey Carter Swegman, director of public policy at the Tahirih Justice Center. “Virginia started the national movement to end child marriage in 2016; by completely banning child marriage today, it has reasserted itself as a leader of that movement.”
Marriage before age 18 has devastating, lifelong consequences — especially for girls — including greater vulnerability to sexual and domestic violence, increased medical and mental health problems, higher drop-out rates from high school and college, greater risk of poverty, and up to 80% divorce rates.
The U.S. State Department has cited these same problems and calls marriages of people younger than 18 a “human rights abuse.” The practice also clashes with U.S. foreign policy, which calls for an end to child marriage.
“When my ambassador or even the secretary of state would call on other countries to ban child marriage, other countries would routinely say it’s legal in America and we would have nothing to say back,” said Jonathan Dach, who worked for the State Department until 2017, testifying for a ban in his state last year. “America’s ability to stand up for girls everywhere depends on our standing up for girls here at home.”
Though it passed almost unanimously in the Senate, the House approved the bill in a divided vote. Hampton Roads Dels. Jay Leftwich, A.C. Cordoza and Barry Knight, all Republicans, voted against the bill. None responded to requests for comment last week from The Virginian-Pilot about why they voted against the legislation.
Josh Hetzler, legislative counsel for Christian fundamentalist lobbying group The Family Foundation, told lawmakers in a Jan. 31 House subcommittee hearing that he opposed the bill because the 2016 legislation was a “very reasonable compromise.”
“If someone is deemed to be a legal adult and otherwise has all the rights of an adult, then of course they should have the right to marry as well,” Hetzler said. “We talk about marriage being a fundamental right but now we want to deny that to legal adults.”
This is a flawed argument. Even emancipated minors are bound by other legal age restrictions. They cannot drink alcohol, cast a vote or buy a lottery ticket.
Those laws exist because we recognize that a child lacks the maturity, experience and impulse control of an adult. A decision as important as who to marry — and when — should be the same.
Kudos to the governor and most of Virginia’s lawmakers, who honored that principle with their action on this issue.
