North Carolina is one of the remaining states that allow children to marry at earlier ages than most others. Under current law, girls as young as 14 can marry if they become pregnant and a judge signs off on the request. Any child can marry at 16 if their parent or guardian approves. This has made the state a destination for what some have described as child bride tourism, with people coming from surrounding states with more strict rules to apply for a wedding license. That may be about to change, however. A new bill nearing passage in the state legislature would raise the minimum age to 16 across the board and limit the maximum age gap between the 16-year-old and their prospective spouse to four years.

Known for its coastlines, mountains and the state that was “first in flight,” North Carolina has also developed a more dubious reputation recently: as a regional destination for adults who want to marry children.

State lawmakers are nearing passage of a bill that could dampen the state’s appeal as the go-to place to bring child brides — but would still leave it short of a national push to increase the age to 18. The proposed legislation would raise the minimum marriage age from 14 to 16 and limit the age difference between a 16-year-old and their spouse to four years.

“We will have moved the needle and made North Carolina no longer at the very bottom of the barrel of states,” said Drew Reisinger, the register of deeds in Buncombe County.

While I can’t say I’m opposed to this change (and since I don’t live in North Carolina I don’t get a vote in the matter anyway), child marriage has always been a troubling and complicated issue for me. In general, I’m opposed to the government – at any level – sticking its nose into the issue of marriage. But the exceptions I’ve always made to this are in cases where people who are unable to give informed consent for sexual activity, either by virtue of being too young or mentally impaired in some fashion, are tying the knot. The potential clearly exists for abuse of minors or the disabled and there are always predators out there willing to take advantage of such situations.

But at the same time, I grew up in an era when many of our parents had married quite young. My paternal grandparents married when they were 14 and 16 and were still together when my grandmother passed away at the age of 94. Society has changed considerably since those days, but not entirely. I doubt anyone wishes pregnancy on a young girl who is likely not emotionally mature enough to deal with parenthood, but if it happens and both she and the father want to try to make a go of it, should the state stop them? That’s particularly true if the parents on both sides approve, at least in my opinion.

And yet there’s still something totally creepy about some guy in his twenties, thirties, or beyond wanting to hook up with a sixteen-year-old girl. (And let’s be honest, it’s almost always an older guy and a younger girl rather than the other way around.) With all that in mind, marriage at 16 to a suitor no older than 19 might be a good compromise. And we’ve traditionally been told that girls mature faster than boys anyway.

Here’s one other aspect to this debate that should probably get more attention. If everyone, including most progressives, is so convinced that children shouldn’t take the plunge into marriage without the blessing of both the state and their parents, not until the age of 18 in most states, how is it that so many of them are still pushing to allow children to undergo “gender transition” treatments and even surgery (!) without such constraints? After all, a bad marriage can be undone via a divorce, though nobody wants to see that happen. But radical alterations to the normal onset of puberty or genital mutilation can not simply be waved away by a judge signing a decree.

This is yet another of the discontinuities in progressive logic on display. You’re not responsible enough to get married until you’re 18 nor to enter the military until nearly the same age. You’re too immature to smoke a cigarette by the same standard and you can’t drink a beer until you’re 21. But you can defy your parents and take puberty blockers causing drastic changes in your physical development or have your genitals mutilated when you’re 14? Tell me again how the world isn’t coming completely unhinged.