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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
So just disenfranchise everyone old enough to be working but not at a slightly higher arbitrary limit. Or are you going to claim that should all be at 21 for no adequately explained reason?
The better thing would be to drop the stupid 21 exclusivity drinking laws have and bring it in line with everything else.
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I mean, you could argue everything should be moved to 21/18/##. I do find weird the US has three ages of majority for some reason.
Anyway, I see no actual reason for why there should be a minimum age of marriage if pedophilia laws were applied to it. So, 16 years old should be able to marry, as long it is to other teens, and not to a much older guy.
But I also think marriage should be much deemphasized overall.
Edited by Heatth on Mar 2nd 2019 at 4:29:35 PM
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I can only speak for Germany. I got the impression that in the US there are still a lot of people who are at least engaged before living together.
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You are aware that the age for both drinking and sexual relationships are way lower in a lot of countries than in the US?
Edited by Swanpride on Mar 2nd 2019 at 11:27:07 AM
It's a bit of a nebulous area. You're legally an adult at 18, but I can guarantee that at 18 I sure as fuck wasn't ready to live a responsible, well-informed life. In many ways I was still a teenager and not ready for the realities of choice even though I was ''technically' a legal adult in the eyes of everyone else. 16-year-olds just don't have the life experience and emotional/mental maturity to decide "Yes, I want to spend the rest of my life with this person," and a lot of harmful thought is tied back to treating kids as adults.
Way back in the day, the "teen" stage didn't exist. You were a child, and then at about 14 you were an adult, and expected to work a trade and contribute to society just like all of the older adults around you. Speaking of marriage though, only nobility or the wealthy tended to marry relatively young to cement political interests. Everyone else had to wait until they had their lives together and a stable income to even think about looking for a partner. The average age of marriage for common/poor men was around 25 or so, iirc. Women just a little younger at around 19ish to 22, because the idea of being a "spinster" that nobody would want if you got too old was looming over their heads.
The idea of "have to stick together no matter what" is a holdover from the country's religious roots. Divorce being seen as a failure is still one of those holdovers as well. It was an idyllic, Godly duty to stay even if you were miserable every second of the day, because "till death do you part." If things were hard, you just stuck it out and made it work, or hid it from polite society and pretended everything was fine. We've progressed socially, but that idea is still ingrained in peoples' minds subconsciously.
Adventurers: homeless people who steal from tombs and kill things.There are laws against forced marriages - on the state level as they are not within the enumerated powers of Congress - but the issue here is marriage in general.
@Heath: I'd be a little wary of coupling age of marriage with age of consent laws - that's how the laws about sexual relationships are usually called even if as I am noticing they often have nothing to do with consent - as someone proposed above; a marriage is a long term committment and a bond that regular sex is not, so it's more reasonable to put a stricter rule for marriages than for sex. Moreover there is a lot of inbuilt redundancy between rape laws and age of consent laws, whereas there is no such thing for age of marriage legislation.
Edited by SeptimusHeap on Mar 2nd 2019 at 8:44:42 PM
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanTrump Mocks Sessions' Southern Accent in CPAC Speech
Not that I have sympathy for Sessions but accent mocking is in pretty poor taste. Also, considering Trump's base of support, I'd think you wouldn't actually want to go down that particular line of mockery.
But then again, considering how his base is, Its Okay As Long As Trump Does It would most likely be in affect along with everything else.
There are people who are in their thirties and have still now grown up, and there are people who emancipate at 16 and are perfectly able to look after themselves.
But it does make sense to have at least the same age restrictions for marriage you have for sexual relationships. If the state things that a teen is too young to be able to have a consensual relationship at 16, it doesn't make sense that marriage would be considered okay.
This isn't the "complain about other tropers at every opportunity" topic either. If you have a problem with my posts, you can holler to the mods. Or PM me. For the record, it wasn't even an argument, it was a random observation in reaction to someone saying that marriage is overrated.
Edited by Swanpride on Mar 2nd 2019 at 12:00:08 PM
This is why I say the importance of marriage should be greatly underemphasized. To me marriage shouldn't be, at all, expected to be a life long bound. It should just be a close bound to live together for as long as it last, with the expectation and acceptance that it could end after a few years.
To me, the current predominant view of marriage is, frankly, toxic. It incentives people to keep going long past it is health. Because divorce is seem as a failure, because marriage is seem to be meant forever. Things should be more fluid and casual. If it lasts forever, good. If it didn't, still good if it ended well.
My father married at 20, my aunt at 18. And they both divorced, but their marriage was good while it lasted and they kept good relations with their exes. And then they both married again, and divorced again, until their latest marriage, which is still going.
So, yeah, I don't think marrying young is, in itself, the problem. The problem is the institucion of marriage itself. It shouldn't be as final as it is made to be.
PS: @Swan, you talked about living together but, you see, to me there shouldn't be a sharp division between that and marriage. In fact, over here, if a couple lives together for long enough (a few years, don't remember exactly), they automatically gain a status similar to marriage.
Edited by Heatth on Mar 2nd 2019 at 7:03:38 AM
Bernie held a kickoff rally in Brooklyn.
Reports are saying upwards to 20,000 people in attendance, which is far larger than the one he held in Burlington back in 2015.
That fundamentally changes the definition of marriage then. Maybe it's me as a married person but it is a bequeathing of your assets and permanent marking as a person as a family member.
Yes, a lot of times its rushed into.
But its meant to be a sign of great devotion.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.![]()
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To be fair, Brooklyn is NYC, and Burlington...is not. Its a small city, or you could say its a very big town.
Edited by AzurePaladin on Mar 2nd 2019 at 6:07:30 AM
The awful things he says and does are burned into our cultural consciousness like a CRT display left on the same picture too long. -Fighteer![]()
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Aside from the legal implications the couple is still making a commitment to live and make a life together. Just because there is the acknowledgement that it might end someday it doesn't make it not significant. A relationship didn't need to be forever to be important.
And, I mean, it is not like most marriage are eternal. My point is that there should be a better acknowledgement of the fact it is quite possible, if not probable, that it will end one day. And make peace with that, to further better relationships and to prevent bad marriages to drag on just for the sake of the commitment.
Again, I feel strongly that divorce shouldn't be viewed as a failure. And as long as a marriage is meant, by definition, to be eternal, that is all a divorce can be

> In Germany marriage has become something you do after you have already lived with your partner for a couple of years.
Living with your partner for awhile before marrying them is pretty common actually outside Germany
have a listen and have a link to my discord server