barnacles67

By that logic rape porn should be illegal too. And many movies and video games of realistic violence / gore.

And that may be part of the argument, but I think the official position of the justice department is that each time a child porn image is viewed, additional harm is inflicted upon the victim in the image.

Maybe today it's legal (or not?) but that's only because generating realistic porn is not possible yet. Does anyone really think that in today's American society so afraid of sex that this would remain legal? Consider the following situation:

Imagine we're 200 years into the future and nothing much has changed with respect to attitudes about sex, freedom of speech, technology, etc. All images available 200 years ago are still there on the internet to download, including illegal child porn. If you are downloading 200+ year old child porn, where everyone depicted is long dead, how could anyone be harmed by you viewing those images? Yet I cannot imagine anyone successfully using that defense if caught with those images.

It's not about who is being harmed by these images (if anyone), it's more about society hating pedophilia and going after it wherever possible, free speech be damned.