cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/2594046

https://twitter.com/RightWingWatch/status/1687125700384374784

I think the age of consent should be mu- lowered, I don’t even believe in the concept. You wanna know why? Because marriage is consent. You wanna know what’s wrong with sex? Being married means you consent to sex all the time. There’s no such thing as marital rape because when you marry a person you have a martial obligation to give your spouse sex whenever they want it. It’s literally Catholic doctrine so, you know, the only moral way to have sex is within marriage and the only way to get married is to consent to sex on demand - uh - and both partners agree to that, it’s their obligation, it’s a mortal sin to deny it. So that’s- that’s- how’s that for consent theory? That’s my… That’s my age of consent- that’s not age of consent, that’s age of marriage.

“Age of consent”. What is this? What is this? Christians have no use for such things. Christians have no use for such a concept - you get married. A Christian… A Christian doesn’t have sex with anybody, a Christian has sex with their spouse within marriage, and nobody is getting married at a prepubescent age. People get married when they’re at a reproductive age, when they’re adolescents… And so th- You know, I’m just redefining it.

According to estimates by Unchained At Last, between 2000 and 2018 almost 300K children were married in the United States. This included some children as young as 10 (p.5):

  1. 10-Year-Olds: 5 (<1%)
  2. 11-Year-Olds: 1 (<1%)
  3. 12-Year-Olds: 14 (<1%)
  4. 13-Year-Olds: 78 (<1%)
  5. 14-Year-Olds: 1,223 (<1%)
  6. 15-Year-Olds: 8,199 (4%)
  7. 16-Year-Olds: 63,956 (29%)
  8. 17-Year-Olds: 148,944 (67%)

As they explain on page 4, some states had missing data, so this is likely an underestimation.