Virginia state legislators are considering a bill that would establish the legal marriage age to be 18 without exception. Under the current law, children ages 16 and 17 can marry in the commonwealth with exceptions.
Minors tying the knot is not a particularly pervasive problem in the commonwealth. Since 2019, only 27 minors have wed in Virginia. Many people, such as Family Foundation legislative counsel Josh Hetzler, argue there are important reasons to object to this bill. Likely top among them is teenage pregnancy.
Protecting children is a noble aspiration. But there are logical inconsistencies in our legislators’ passion for protecting minors.
At the heart of this matter is the question of when a child is mature enough to make adult decisions. Virginia’s age of consent is 18, which would be logically consistent with the marriage bill. If an adult has sexual relations with a minor, he or she is subject to criminal prosecution.
However, Virginia also has a “Romeo and Juliet law,” which allows children ages 15 to 17 to engage in sexual intercourse without fear of criminal prosecution. Effectively, two teenagers can legally conceive a baby together, but under the proposed marriage legislation, they would not be permitted to marry right away, even with the support of their parents.
The state’s abortion law further complicates the matter. Virginia law stipulates that a parent, grandparent, or adult sibling living with the minor must grant permission for the abortion. Planned Parenthood, however, highlights that there is a legal loophole in which a judge can excuse a minor from this requirement. The organization further offers its resources to assist the minor with the judicial bypass process to attain an abortion.
In the spirit of protecting children, Virginia also rightfully has laws in place to prevent minors from purchasing tobacco, alcohol, or marijuana. The commonwealth further legally protects children under 18 from altering their bodies with tattoos or body piercings. In 2023, Virginia senators also considered a bill to prevent minors from having permanent transgender-related surgeries, but the Education and Health Committee voted against it.
Meanwhile, Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s (R-VA) administration issued its Model Policies for Virginia’s public schools in 2023, specifying, among other things, that parents must be notified and grant permission if their children would like to change gender identities in school. The policy is predicated on the commonsense notion that parents, not agents of the government, have the child’s best interest at heart.
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Many of the Democratic-majority school boards and liberal superintendents in Virginia subsequently issued defiant statements detailing they would refuse to follow the updated guidelines. Effectively, children in these districts as young as 5 years old can change their gender identities without their parents’ knowledge or consent. Given that social transitions often lead to physical transformations, these are extremely mature decisions that Virginia’s schools are allowing young children to make without their parents’ permission.
Yet marriage — not body-altering surgeries, social gender transitions, pregnancies, or abortions — seems to be the biggest enemy of childhood innocence, according to the state House and Senate. If Virginia’s legislators are truly committed to protecting the innocence of children, there are better ways to do that than attacking minors’ marriage exceptions, which are used in only very few cases.
Stephanie Lundquist-Arora is a contributor for the Washington Examiner, a mother in Fairfax County, Virginia, an author, a member of the Coalition for TJ, and the Fairfax chapter leader of the Independent Women’s Network.
