In 7.0 Gold, lynx hasn't been patched to be SSL aware so it could handle https URLs.
I know - it was a timing issue (lynx is maintained from Germany, and we weren't supposed to have access to RSA before the patent expiration). Now that the patent has expired, it's fixed in 2.8.4-4, should appear in Rawhide shortly.
Umm.. You forgot to actually turn the patch on in -4. :-) There are a _lot_ of warnings though, but the compile finishes with 'make SSL_DIR=/usr' at least.
This was fixed in -5 a couple of days ago.
Unless something's changed, the patch does not do certificate validation (which differs from other web browsers like Netscape). This is why we made the conscious decision to leave it out.