With so much focus on the bill protecting religious liberty, it seems that little attention has been paid to the actual bill extending the right to marry to same-sex couples in New Hampshire. That bill enshrines differing marriageable ages for different-sex couples and same-sex couples. The bill retains the current marriageable ages for different-sex couples, effectively permitting a 14-year-old boy to marry a 13-year-old girl (a troubling possibility, if you ask me). For same-sex couples, however, the marriageable age is set to be the same as the age of consent (i.e., 18 years old). So, different-sex couples may marry below the age of consent with the permission of their parents and a judge, but same-sex couples must wait until they can themselves consent to the marriage. So much for all of the rhetoric about equality.
-Tony Infanti
