> I'll concede that it's not well thought out.

It doesn’t take into account whether there’s a victim or not. In a free thinking liberal society we don’t punish thought crimes because the concept is absurd. It’s what allows us to have diversity of art, literature, thought, etc. Fantasy != reality.

Today we allow all manner of “unspeakable” acts to be portrayed and imagined: war, murder, sexual abuse, speeding, gambling, fraud, you name it we can write, draw, think, and talk about it. There’s nothing fundamentally special about portraying a minor in a lewd way in that sense.

So I think any call to heavily punish people for a new crime should be framed in the context of: who’s the victim and what harm are we preventing? If there is no victim then it’s much harder to build a case that there’s harm.