Maybe I'm in the minority here, but the 18-year old male may be entitled to some understanding. I'm not sure he really should be branded a rapists and sex offender for the rest of his life (not to mention serve a long jail term), if this girl really made a plausible claim that she was 15 or 16.
I've got far less sympathy for older males who make the same claim.
Under the circumstances, you are correct.
No, you're not in the minority. In virtually every state in this country, 18 year olds and 16 year olds can have sex without breaking the law. Heck, a 15 year old and a 14 year old can in most states.
A law that makes no provision for teenagers having sex with other teenagers near their age is just wrong. There is no sense in criminalizing what most of us have done ourselves.
This was a bad law, and needs to be re-written. That's what supreme courts do...throw out bad laws and force legislators to think again and make the law sensible.
There was a thread recently on FR about a vigilante who murdered two convicted sex offenders whose addresses he was able to get from a database. Naturally, he received lots of thumbs up on the forum despite the fact that one of the "sex offenders" he murdered was an 18 or 19 year-old high school student convicted of having sex with his underaged girlfriend.
You may be in the minority, but I agree with you. There are exceptions in U.S. law if the age difference between the two is very small, like 2 years. Otherwise, according to the wording in the article, if a 14 year old has sex with a 14 year old, bot would be guilty of rape since neither is over the age of consent. I think the court was just trying to inject a more reasonable boundary into the law. But then again, that's the job of the legislature, not the court.