I’m not talking about glass ceiling/equal pay stuff here, I’m talking about societies that treat women as property, disallow them from getting educations, formalize the “women should be pregnant, barefoot, in the kitchen, and not speak unless spoken too” in law, etc…

So is your sad attempt to devils’ advocate in a thread devoted to child rapists. This isn’t an issue of statutory rape, this is nonconsensual, often violent rape, forced into a lifetime of rape.

Congrats for your having a dumb opinion.

I could drink it all day.

22:28 If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found;
22:29 Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days.

 That’s Deuteronomy, in the Christian OT. The whole of Chapter 22 is pretty enlightening.

Driving cars and signing up for military service are also complicated legal and financial situations which many of the people entering into them are not fully aware of when they start.  We let 17 year old kids do both of those.

If you think accidentally having kids at 14 is not as painful an unintended consequence as a messy divorce at 17 or 18, I disagree.  Divorces are at least final; kids are at least 19 years of pretty intense involvement, unless you give up for adoption.

If kids at 14 and 15 having sex with each other is not abhorrent, then why is marriage at 17 or maybe 16 not at least legally tolerable, even though I doubt most of us here would recommend it.

Sure, it’s possible that older-man-underage-girl marriages could be abusive, and I am reasonably sure that happens some in real life, but so do some abusive older-man-18-year-old-woman marriages.

It may generally be a bad idea, but in many US states it’s legal, and I don’t think that making it stricter or less morally OK is a good idea.  Something to be wary of?  Sure.  Ban or suppress?  Uh, no.  Counsel the kids, but don’t ban them.

Instead of the attitude you’ve taken, why not instead visit Morroco, talk to people, engage with their culture, become educated about some of the positive things Moroccan society offers, spend money and help alleviate some of the poverty many Moroccan’s live in. In other words, be a positive influence, rather than no influence.

Tourism really helps lift developing nations out of poverty, as poverty rates lift, education usually follows. As education and poverty rates lift,  people can expend energy overcoming society’s other ills.

And once you accept that at least within same-age-group-ranges kids having sex is just not reasonable to prohibit, marriage should be considered on the table.

Yes, forcing kids to marry is ludicrous.  Yes, selling kids to someone for marriage is barbaric.  No, if a 17 year old is mature enough (and plenty are) that they’re as good as the average 18 year old, who are you to tell them no?  I don’t think it’s generally a good idea for just any 17-year-old, but I know some people who were together enough at 16 that they made better judgements than others at 21.

There’s a huge range here – that in no way supports adult sexual abuse of children – that still allows teens to legally be sexual, and in some cases to marry.

At some point you have to stop dictating their decisions to them and let them go.  At 18 you can’t; at 17 or 16 maybe you shouldn’t.

The main thing such a law does is take many cases out of the legal realm, and into private “negotiation” between possibly very unequal parties, or into “traditional” systems of dealing with this.

And many states in the US allow marriage before age 18 with parental consent. Alabama allows it at 14, and Utah used to until recently.