Did they meet in a car-park, in secret, while he was married to someone else with no intention of ever marrying her?
Obviously not. So not the same thing at all.
The full context matters. Intent and behavior matters.
Fully agree with you here. We know people mature at different ages but In this case and era it's almost a dead cert they didn't even engage in sex until they were married anyways. I think there's been a few JWs on here that mentioned their spouse was 17 when they got engaged and they were in their 20s. Very different situation.
That's why I don't get hung up too much on the age of the women Lloyd engaged with because it's also about his intentions and the power imbalance. Obviously it's worse if the Thai girls were 15 but to me it's still pretty bad even if they were 18.
It utterly spins my head that people don't get why a young girl in a poverty stricken country, coerced, enslaved or otherwise, being bought by a 40+ yr old man from a wealthy nation that claims to represent rape victims, is beyond sic