[nnfy]

While I believe that western sexual norms are a bit puritanical, the premise behind protecting children with zealous laws is that it is extremely difficult to judge whether child pornography is truely victimless, even if you believe that harm from childhood sexuality is overstated in modern society. Because of the power imbalance between adults and children, and the permanent effects that abuse can have on children, it is reasonable to err on the side of caution and keep all child/adult sexual interactions illegal, and reduce demand for such interactions by keeping pornography illegal.

As an aside, I am curious as to the reason you are being down voted, besides your audacity of expressing an unpopular opinion.

[mulmen]

Short of presenting data I think you're making a bit of a leap to say that pornography encourages some undesired behavior. It could easily be argued either way.

[averagewall]

I tend to agree with "better safe than sorry" since it's unclear. It can go too far though if you end up punishing many more adults for tangentially related crimes than the number of children who were harmed by actual abuse.

As for cultural norms. Many primitive cultures use age of puberty as age of consent. I heard of one (probably Amazon) tribe where sex was treated as common as eating or pooing. It wasn't related to marriage, which they did have. Children were involved much younger than our age of consent. I don't think you could say they were harmed since it was normal behavior and they apparently grew up without emotional problems.

We tend to confuse normal sexual attraction to teenagers with peadophilia and lump them all into the same group. For example teachers having relationships with underage teenage students. It might be harmful but the sexuality is normal, not deviant.

[hallman76]

That's not expressing an "unpopular opinion". They're being ignorant about the harm being done to the victims of child pornography and (it seems) trying legitimize that harm by drawing a dotted line to homosexuality.

It has no place on HN. I would downvote if I could.

[glogla]

Depends.

Teenagers sexting each other?

Someone drawing or 3d modelling fictional underage character?

In many jurisdictions thats the same thing as genuine child abuse base child porn. In my jurisdiction, Harry Potter fanfiction with sex counts as child porn - and as one with extended penalty because it is "delivered through very efficient means like computer network".

Not all things are all the same, even with the same label.

[nnfy]

>They're being ignorant about the harm being done to the victims of child pornography

You are foolish to believe that all children are harmed by childhood sexuality and/or child pornography. Sex is part of the human nature, and we do not wake up on our 18th birthday and realize that we are ready to begin exploring our bodies. Never mind the fact that human beings can be conditioned to both be traumatized by and accepting of sexual activity by/as children.

>It has no place on HN. I would downvote if I could. This amounts to morally-derived censorship.

It is foolish to presume that your cultural programming should not be scrutinized; society is worse off for this kind of puritanical closed mindedness. No, I'm not asking you to accept victimization of children, but if you cannot honestly discuss and/or examine both sides of an issue, you cannot be confident in your opinion.