Supreme Court Same Sex Marriage Argumet

[Anima]

To elaborate: There's also a fundamental right to self-determination, but parents can control their kids until age 18.  There's a fundamental right to freedom of religion, but kids can be forced by court order (say, in a divorce) to attend a particular parent's church until age 18 or so.  The rules are simply different for minors; a lot of things that are fundamental rights - and thus invoke strict scrutiny - are given, in practice, intermediate scrutiny when applied to minors.  You can't purchase a handgun in most places until you're 21.  You can't concealed carry in most places until 18 or 21.  Generally, age trumps, or at least diminishes, fundamental rights.

TL;DR:  It's nonsense to claim that a ruling in favor of gay marriage would also legalize child marriage.  Gay people can consent to marriage because, legally, they have the capacity to do so.

Expanding what you are legally allowed to consent to is not equivalent to expanding the capacity to consent.

Understood. However, your argument is thereby predicated on parental consent (which it does not need to be, but currently is). It may not be assumed that parents will not consent to allowing their underage child to marry. Courtney Stodden was 16 when she married Josh Hutchinson who was 55 with her mother's consent. I am delaying reference to Warren Jeffs situation until we move on to the subject of polygamy or polyandry.

At present two states (I believe one is 14 and the other is 16) set the legal age of marriage with parental consent below the legally recognize age of self-determined consent at 18. As a fundamental right any restriction upon age of marriage must past strict scrutiny and cannot be imposed without doing so and they must show there restriction is narrowly tailored and least restrictive.