I would like a more specific standard than "nude". Namely the picture should be sexual/pornographic in nature. [0] That is to say, I don't see any problem in, for example, children skinny dipping; nor in taking pictures of them doing so.
Outlawing nude pictures of minors also creates an unnecessary legal grey area with the inevitable exemptions. For instance, I don't think any object to photographing a genital to document a medical issue, so there will be some such pictures that are considered "ok". Outlawing nudity of children in images in general inevitably leads to situtations where one would avoid taking such a picture, or prosecute someone as a result of misunderstanding the context of such a picture.
[0] Legally speaking, this has the obvious problem of defining pornographic. I think the actual standard should be to look for abuse in the creation of the image.
That also depends on who was taking the picture. People should stop calling child protective services on parents who took pictures of their own kids skinny-dipping on a camping trip. If a stranger sneaked up on the campsite to take the same kind of pictures, on the other hand, that could be problematic.
I think the approach should be similar to violence. We have plenty of video games where the player is encouraged to steal, murder, slaughter or otherwise engage in unacceptable behaviour but society hasn't become less clear that these things are wrong. Everyone knows that murdering a random pedestrian with a golf club on the street is wrong but we still let people play GTA.
I've thought about this over the years myself. There are several issues here. First is the age of consent, it varies from 16 to 18 throughout the US. So 18 catches all the states, but it's not illegal to have sex with a 16 year old in many places.
Second, sexual maturity has physical, emotional, and intellectual components. There have been 21 year olds that I am not attracted to because they're too immature, and there have also been 15 year olds that I have been attracted to because they are (or appear to be) sexually mature. Somebody had to draw the line somewhere, 18 is an arbitrary designation that probably doesn't catch enough of the edge cases.
Third, there's a big difference between having sex with someone and paying them for sex work. I've seen my share of depraved porn and I guess my feeling is that it would be harmful for a student in high school to be making it. But again I understand it's an arbitrary number and a society where the age of majority was calibrated to 16 years old might work, who knows.
What about porn featuring unpaid minors? Well, it's basically just volunteer sex work, there's no real difference between amateur porn and professional porn in terms of consent. I think for the later years it's mostly about protecting the transition from teenager into adult, not about stopping pedophilia.
I don't think there's really an easy answer to any of it... my opinion is subject to change, etc.
I think you are grasping and I'm not sure where to start.
The legislature and the courts have defined all of this have you looked?
A federal law that results in some states allowing the possession and sale but not the production of certain goods sounds strange to me, do you have any examples?
> But "curing" pedophiles seems to be hard, similarly to how you can't "cure" homosexuals.
I understand what you mean here, but I think you could have made a better analogy. Homosexuality is not predatory. It doesn't seek to exploit anyone, even indirectly. Pedophilia, when practiced, exploits children (directly or indirectly). Certainly, you can be homosexual or a pedophile and reject the inclinations that you have. Being a "practicing" homosexual does not harm anyone--except perhaps those with delicate sensibilities--while being a "practicing" pedophile does. "Curing" homosexuality implies changing someone's harmless disposition. "Curing" pedophilia implies rehabilitation of someone who actively seeks to exploit children for their own pleasure. Governments and organizations have no place deciding whether someone should be "cured" of homosexuality because it doesn't affect or benefit any member of the public. There is no need. Governments have a responsibility to keep children safe, though, and rehabilitating sexual predators is a crucial part of that.
The distinction is an important one. A better analogy would perhaps be a comparison to addiction. Addiction is very hard to treat, and there is no truly successful cure for it. Addicts don't harm people, but the people procuring drugs like heroin and cocaine often do.
Plenty of celibate 'adult-lovers' prove that just because you can't get what you desire, doesn't mean you will act on it.
Even if you want to act, I'm sure there are plenty of adult sex workers who will help you with your fantasies. Still no exploitation involved.
As for your comparison with addiction, that is actually a victimless crime. Even procuring drugs (including harddrugs) doesn't lead to harm to anyone. Ask Portugal. Only when your laws make drugs so expensive that only Wall Street bankers are able to afford their addiction (and guess where a lot of cocaine addicts are!) does it lead to problems.
But there are also prison cells filled with pedophiles that do produce or consume child porn. Children _cannot_ consent and do learn from abuse. Homosexuality exploits exactly nobody across the entire world population. You said it yourself: pedophiles _desire_ something that we can all agree is harmful, and even if some individuals show restraint, exploitation happens. That's inarguable, and pedophilia carrying stigma is not unwise. Drawing a comparison between homosexuality and pedophilia blurs that distinction between and normalizes stigma against LGBT people. That community doesn't need or deserve any more demonization.
> As for your comparison with addiction, that is actually a victimless crime. Even procuring drugs (including harddrugs) doesn't lead to harm to anyone.
Addiction is a condition, and a lifelong one at that. You don't get rid of addiction, though addicts can live sober lives. In that way, it's not so different from a predisposition like pedophilia. I can empathize with both of these cohorts because they got dealt a bad hand and they can't change it.
Just because addiction shouldn't be a problem doesn't mean it is not, and just because drug use is "victimless" doesn't mean addicts and their families don't suffer and drug traffickers don't do terrible things. Have you ever seen the aftermath of a meth lab explosion? Or driven past the wreckage from a drunk-driving accident? What about seeing a family member fall victim to prescription painkillers, fueling an industry hell-bent on creating addicts? And then watch them sneak away in the early morning to withdraw money at the ATM so they can get a quick hit of something to take the edge off until they can get their prescription renewed because two pills doesn't cut it anymore?
Your final assertion might not be completely false, but it is a vast and undeserved oversimplification. People predisposed to addiction will always be predisposed to addiction. Portugal might have low rates of death from opioids and other drugs (because they're actually treating it), but they're eighth in the world for alcohol consumption. 3.8% of people in Portugal die from alcohol, which--depending on how you measure--can be more than double what we have in the US.
Adults looking at it is of course harmless, but don't make it easily available on the internet. If you do I'd say you're acting immorally and I support legal repercussions. I know people who have been messed up when they were very young and found it.
In Japan sexually explicit comics are strictly 18+, clearly marked as such, and are sold as you would sell liquor or cigarettes. Making sure children don't have access to these is a matter of public awareness and parental guidance — it seems to work pretty well there.
> I know people who have been messed up when they were very young and found it.
Messed up from lolicon (i.e., Japanese comics featuring minors in sexually evocative situations) or messed from access to porn in general (or even actual child pornography)?
Violence, hate speech, gore, (adult) porn; even written fantasies containing content that may stimulate forms of destructive behaviour — the list is endless! Either you shield children from all of it (which is sensible for young children, but not tenable for teenagers) or you educate, guide, train, and accompany your child as they learn to handle an ever increasing amount of freedom. Parenting and education are key here, not banning everything that may harm a child's mind.
When everyone else is either judging you or trying too hard to pretend that nothing happened, you internalize a sort of guilt or shame that can haunt you for life. People who have seen terrible shit in their childhood but turned out okay, on the other hand, often report that they had someone to help them understand what was happening without rushing to a judgment.
Children usually want to tell everyone about what they saw. If they keep it to themselves, it's often because they understand that someone else would judge them, punish them, get angry at them, feel disappointed at them, etc. for seeing it. Their friends might have told them that it's taboo. Their parents might have acted really awkwardly around similar content in the past. Or a predator might have said that what happened in the shed is a cute little secret between them.
Whatever reasons they have for trying to hide it, it's a symptom of a society that discourages talking frankly and objectively about certain kinds of things.
They're not illegal in the US. So maybe your incorrect assumptions are why it is confusing for you?
You might figure it out, but in this country, any prohibition on expression has to be meticulously defined, and this topic is no exception.
You need to be careful about this. In many jurisdictions possession of such an image is a "strict liability" crime and you are guilty--even if that nude image is of your own child.
Now, normally this isn't a big deal as humans in the system normally treat these images as they were intended.
However, add a nasty divorce into the mix and you can wind up in very deep trouble.
If you aren't rich enough for appeals court then none of your rights matter and it is helpful to be aware of what the collective conscious believes is legal / illegal.
Child porn would supposedly be a safe outlet for pedophiles, at the cost of possibly eroding social taboos around child sexual abuse. But the tradeoff is irrelevant, because the production of child porn is usually exploiting and abusing children, making it morally bad.
Lolicon doesn't harm any children. The only potential harm left is eroding helpful social taboos. But that seems easy enough to fix: make lolicon legal, but semi-taboo. If it's not seen as normal, it doesn't normalize anything, and you have all the positives without the negatives.
So I will view you as weird if you enjoy lolicon, but I don't have a problem with it. I would even advocate for its existence.
Somewhat related, I also can't really justify the US standard for child porn. Nude pictures of 10 year olds are bad and should be illegal. But what is the harm in nudes of 17 year olds?