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Notes -
CSAM is one of the least rational areas of politics.
In the dark ages before the sexual revolution, there were all kinds of sexual deviants against whom upstanding, proper citizens could unite. Gays, interracial couples, unmarried women having sex, kinky people, people using birth control.
Today, most of these targets have been swept away by a big wave of sexual tolerance. Saying "it is wrong to have sex before marriage" makes you sound like a cringy old person.
However, we have also established that adults having sex with kids is bad because it causes severe psychological issues for the kids.
So pederasts and pedophiles become the lightning rod for most of these innate drives to police the sexual relations of their neighbors -- which did not magically disappear.
This is obviously a very emotional topic, and such topics often allow you to score big political wins. Under an evidence-based system, the focus would be on preventing the actual sexual abuse of children both by exclusive pedophiles and other men who act opportunistically. This would entail de-stigmatizing pedophiles who did not commit any sexual offenses with kids (which in turn would increase the odds of them willing to risk therapy, which would reduce the odds of them becoming child abusers) and trying to get the shared social environment of both perpetrators and victims to speak out if they suspect sexual abuse is going on.
CSAM would be treated like snuff videos. Commissioning a snuff video is commissioning a murder and should be punished as such, and paying for them should be a felony to discourage their production, and if you want you can also criminalize distribution and possession. But if half of your homicide department works on possession of snuff video cases, then I would argue that you have your priorities wrong -- most murders do not happen for the creation of snuff videos, nor does their consumption precede most murders. Fake snuff videos lack the thing which makes them immoral in the first place -- a victim. Even if you want to regulate horror movies, it would be a good idea to not simply classify them as snuff.
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