[Avodah] the cohen gadol and marriage to a pubescent girl

[Moshe Y. Gluck]

R'n TK:
(But I do agree that the idea of a 12-year-old girl marrying a man of 40 or 50 is quite distasteful, and I wonder if there are any other opinions that would enable a widowed KG to get around that.)

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Personally, if I was a twelve-year-old girl I probably wouldn't want to marry at all, certainly not someone 40 or 50. But what if some twelve-year-old did? Is there something inherently wrong with it? In our culture it is both illegal and considered immoral because of the potential for abuse involved - minors must be protected. But what if we know, for certain, that this particular minor will not be harmed, and she also wants to marry him? Is it fundamentally wrong? I don't think so. And there are many good reasons for a girl to want to marry someone - like the Kohen Gadol - whom she can totally rely on. So when Bayis Shlishi is built, I'm sure that the Kohen Gadol will not have to fill out a Frumster profile. (Don't forget, also, that there are significant Gashmius reasons to want to marry the Kohen Gadol.) 
Interestingly, according to this article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriageable_age) Girls in South Africa, Yemen, Brazil, and Sri Lanka can be married at twelve; Tanzanian girls can be married even earlier if the marriage isn't consummated until the girl is twelve. Lest you think that these backward countries are of no import, in New Hampshire marriageable age is, "14 for males and 13 for females, in cases of "special cause" with parental consent and court permission."
I wrote in an earlier post, "You're making this assessment based on the society you live in. If you were living in an era where the average lifespan was 35, would you still feel this way?" R' Joel Rich responded, "True, but doesn't this get to an issue of the Torah was given for all times and all places?" R' Akiva Miller responded similarly, "I thought it was abundantly clear that RYS was speaking specifically about a kohen gadol in *our* society, and that in another society different rules would hold." I want to clarify - my point was (as it was above) that marrying a twelve-year-old is not, even today, considered inherently immoral - otherwise we couldn't justify it even in a case of society which suffered shorter lifespans.
(FWIW, I know a couple in a happy very-socially-unacceptable-due-to-age-differences marriage. Go figure.)

KT,
MYG