#SexIndustryArticles How is child marriage still legal in the U.S.? archive.is/wHv58 "Every three seconds, on average, a girl under the age of 18 is married somewhere in the world. In India. In Ethiopia. And, to our shame, in Illinois, Maryland, Colorado — and most of America. Thirty-two states still allow child marriages in some circumstances, such as with the permission of a parent or a judge. Two states, New Mexico and Mississippi, have no minimum age at all. Some of the defenders of child marriages in America are religious groups on the far right, but as a liberal myself, I find it deeply dispiriting that in a number of states they are joined by left-leaning organizations such as the local affiliates of the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood — even, in Illinois, the National Organization for Women. That’s right: Some progressives and feminists fight to defend child marriage, usually on the basis of “child rights.” I shake my head in disbelief: If you actually talk to girls and women who have been married young, what you often hear is the opposite of empowerment. Instead, it’s oppression and rape and the loss of education and childhood. For progressive organizations to ally themselves with right-wing extremists to defend what sometimes amounts to state-sanctioned statutory rape — this is liberal self-caricature. Thankfully, child marriage has just been banned in California, after a nine-year battle that should never have taken so long. Ten days ago Gov. Gavin Newsom of California signed a bill banning all child marriage in the state, in the presence of Courtney Stodden, a model and singer who was married at 16 to a 50-year-old actor who she says was abusive; he has denied that. Previously, there was no minimum age for marriage in California, so long as a parent and judge consented. Progressive groups, including the state affiliates of the A.C.L.U. and Planned Parenthood, had worked to block passage of a ban, but opposition melted when the issue drew more attention. As a longtime foreign correspondent for The Times, I often saw girls in Africa or South Asia married to older men; like most people, I saw this as a human rights issue. But in 2017 I realized, to my astonishment, that the same was happening in the United States — and at that time every single state allowed children to be married. That year I interviewed a Florida woman, Sherry Johnson, who was married at 11 to a 20-year-old man, a member of her church, who had raped her. Johnson had become pregnant, child welfare authorities were investigating, and her parents and church wanted to avoid a messy criminal case. “I guess you’re just going to get married,” she recalled her mother telling her."