Rep. John McGuire (R-Va.) has come up with a new explanation for his 2024 Virginia General Assembly vote against raising the state’s legal marriage age to 18 as he faces a tougher-than-expected reelection battle in his conservative district.

McGuire had previously offered a straightforward reason for his vote: “We need more families,” McGuire said in February, according to a recording obtained by the Virginia news site Dogwood, which is funded by Democratic donors. “If a young man and a young girl get pregnant, they need to have a marriage.”

But in an interview Tuesday with a local TV station, McGuire said the vote was necessary to protect young members of the armed services.

“The reason we voted no is because you can join the United States military, go overseas and die, but you can’t marry your fiance who might get your benefits back home if she’s pregnant,” McGuire said.

McGuire’s attempt to explain the vote comes amid a surge in Democratic ads hammering Republicans for protecting pedophiles such as the late billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

McGuire’s Democratic challenger, Tom Perriello, highlighted his opponent’s vote in a campaign ad this month.

“McGuire opposed both parties by voting to allow grown men to marry 16-year-old girls,” the ad’s narrator says, noting that McGuire, like most House Republicans, refused to sign a petition to force a vote on legislation to release the government’s files on Epstein.

Perriello previously represented the Republican-leaning district for one term in 2009 and 2010 and is hoping to ride a “blue wave” back to Capitol Hill.

But political forecasters still give McGuire, who toppled former Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) with support from President Donald Trump in the 2024 Republican primary, a strong chance of keeping the seat.

“All Perriello thinks he has to do to win is lie about me, and I think all I have to do to win is to tell the truth about him,” McGuire said this week, describing Perriello as a tool of Democratic campaign donor George Soros and progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).

“He’s using hyperbole, and he’s exaggerating,” McGuire said of the child marriage accusation.

McGuire was the only member of the state Senate to vote against the bill, although 42 Republican members of the House of Delegates did so. Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) ultimately signed the bill into law.

The U.S. military allows 17-year-olds to enlist with parental consent. Virginia state law previously allowed minors 16 and older to marry if they’d been legally “emancipated” from their parents. Now the commonwealth is one of only 16 states to have outlawed child marriage.

Nearly 300,000 children were married in the U.S. between 2000 and 2018, according to an estimate by the advocacy group Unchained At Last. National legislation to outlaw minor marriage has been introduced in Congress but not advanced.

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