Here’s a truism: A 22-year-old man should not have sex with a 13-year-old girl. It should be a crime, and in most places it is.

But not in Kansas or Massachusetts.

Matthew Koso is an adult. He began a sexual relationship with a child, a girl of only 13 years. She became pregnant. The couple, who lived in Nebraska, crossed the state line into Kansas, where they were married in a legal ceremony when the girl was 14. Just because something’s legal, doesn’t make it right.

In Kansas, a person can get married when they are as young as 12 if they have the permission of a parent or, in some cases, a judge. Koso took advantage of the anachronistic law to legalize his sexual exploitation of a minor.

The girl’s mother had given the pair permission to marry. The stigma of a teen mother with a child born out of wedlock apparently was too much to bear. But when the couple returned to Nebraska to live, the state’s attorney general stepped in.

AG Jon Bruning charged Koso with statutory rape. In Nebraska, a girl must be 17 years old before she can marry. Public opinion has turned against Bruning for what some see as his attempts to break up a family, and the case has drawn national attention.

For all the talk these days of the sanctity of marriage, the fact that children can be married off should draw outrage from all quarters. It’s a national disgrace that in Massachusetts and Kansas, 12-year-olds can marry with parental consent. It’s no better that in Vermont, the age is 13, or that in Texas, South Carolina, Alabama and Utah it’s 14. In Missouri, it’s 15. In most of the country, including Maine, the marrying age is 16, still too young in our minds.

Marriage is a serious commitment – or should be. Making it legal for adults to woo young girls into sex with the promise of matrimony only makes the state an accessory to the abuse.

It makes no sense that a girl isn’t trusted to work, vote or even drive in some cases, but can be allowed to marry. Maine – and the rest of the country – needs to re-examine the lines that have been drawn for children, especially in regard to marriage.