What's really stupid is that a law can dictate what is and isn't consent, independent of whether or not someone gives consent. One day it's child rape... the next day (on their birthday), everything is fine, just normal consensual sex.
I myself was a 13 year old boy who had an ongoing sexual relationship with a much older woman. In the eyes of the law, she was a "rapist". However, the reality of the situation is that I was not pressured, coerced or anything even remotely like that. I wanted that relationship.
The laws exist to protect kids from being abused in a real sense... being forced... coerced etc. However, everyone is so bent on virtue signaling just how much they aren't a pedophile, that nobody stops and bothers asking why these arbitrary age constructs exist in the first place.
If the spirit of the law is to protect people from real abuse, and no real abuse occurs... then how is justice being served by prosecuting people when no harm was done.
I'm not claiming that no harm was done or that it was entirely consensual in this case. However, this does explain why society's view on the matter does not echo that of the author.
Many if not most people can look back to themselves at that age and understand that they likely wanted sex and probably would have had the capacity to choose whether or not to have it.
The author's position... That we should consider someone to be as bad as a rapist just because of an arbitrary legal age, is ridiculous. There is no moral equivalency between someone who forcefully abuses children, and someone who has a consensual sexual relationship.
What's really outrageous about this whole thing is that the court's own standards do not support the law as it stands. American courts routinely charge young teenagers as adults. Are we to believe that a young teenager cannot legally consent to sex, but they can be put on trial and held to the same standard as adults?
These two positions are completely incongruous. Either change statutory rape laws or stop prosecuting young teenagers as adults.... because as it stands now, the court regularly contradicts it's own arbitrary age constructs.