If a 16- or 17-year-old girl has consensual sex with her 18- or 19-year-old boyfriend, Sen. Brent Hill, R-Rexburg, says the boy shouldn't be convicted of felony rape and branded a sex offender for life. That's the current law in Idaho, the eastern Idaho senator told his fellow senators today, and it's been ruining young men's lives. "In most states, in fact 35 states, the age of consent is 16," Hill told the Senate today. In Idaho, it's 18. Under his bill, SB 1385, the age of consent would remain 18, except in cases where the girl's partner is less than three years older than her. "It doesn't protect anybody over 20 years old, nobody," Hill told the Senate. "It doesn't protect anybody who uses force." Also left untouched is the law that makes plying the girl with alcohol or drugs and then having sex the same as forcible rape, at any age.

Hill said he's accumulated a thick file of cases in which consensual, boyfriend-girlfriend relationships have led to such convictions. "He's branded forever. He's a felon convicted of a sex crime. He can't choose where he wants to live, in some cases he can't be around little sisters, nieces, and will have a hard time getting a decent job. I have a whole folder here ... of young men who've gone through exactly that." Holding up a volume of Idaho Code, which includes the current rape law, Hill declared, "We have a book right here that labels almost half the boys in the graduating class of 2010 as rapists, felons, criminals." There was no debate on the bill, and it passed unanimously, 35-0; it now moves to the House.

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