I feel like this is an area where the federal government has no business making any laws what so ever. This is more political than it is about the "children". Do you think the politicians in DC have any business regulating morality? Child porn is an issue used just like abortion to get votes. After all, who could be against "protecting children". If they really cared about the children, they would stop churches from filling their small undeveloped heads full of Jesus crap and a God that can see through walks, feeling sex is sinful, and sinners are punished. Children need to be told the truth. They need to know that their acme or waite problem has more to do with what they eat than where their hands were last night. Telling children crap like this does far more harm to a child then where and how he/she may have been touched. The issue is phony as a $3 bill.
Abortion doesn't "get votes".
It's legal, after all.
It has been for going on forty years now (which is nearly as long as it was
illegal), and there's no realistic possibility of that ever changing.
I am completely against the government trying to regulate morality.
I am fully supportive of minors having more rights and freedoms than they currently do, even if it means slightly less draconian "protections".
I recognize that humans are sexual beings from birth.
But the thing is, children deserve to own their own sexuality.
I disapprove strongly, for instance, of adults who punish or shame their children for masturbating. It's their body, their right. They should be advised to retire to a private place if they want to do it, so that others won't have to see them. The end.
I disapprove of adults who deflect their children's questions about their bodies. All serious questions should be answered in a calm, positive, affirmative and accepting manner (I say "serious" because children will ask some utterly ridiculous questions just to try your patience sometimes).
And on that note: of
course legislators should be involved in combating child porn. They should be more actively involved than they already are. Perpetrators should be punished to the fullest extent the law will allow. They are vile and reprehensible.
If they had a true, adult understanding of the repercussions, no child would ever choose to appear in porn. That is my belief.
Prepubescent children have no desire to parlay their immature sexuality into financial gain. It would never occur to them to do so. Appearing in pornography would never occur to them. They aren't even capable of truly understanding what the sex industry is
about, or how it works.
Since they are incapable of an adult understanding of the situation, adults must make that call
for them until they're old enough to make it for themselves.
Perverted, predatory adults don't want kids in porn because they care about children's
rights. They want to use them for profit and sexual gratification.
That is not respecting children's right to own their own bodies. That is attempting to strip children of their bodily sovereignty and commandeer their bodies and their sexuality for purposes beyond their comprehension.
It's terrible and wrong, and it is accomplished via trickery, manipulation, threats, and intimidation. At
best.
We should all oppose child porn with every fiber of our beings.
You make it sound as if anyone who opposes it is nothing more than colossal buttinski who wants to crap on everybody's parade.
Everyone should oppose it. Everyone should want perpetrators apprehended and punished. It's
that clearly wrong.
It's beyond my understanding how anyone could be advocating for fewer (or
no, in your case) laws prohibiting child porn.
If you believe it's a children's rights stance you're taking, you couldn't be more misguided.
Children
do have a right to their own sexuality.
Adults who lure them into porn for their own nefarious purposes are
robbing them of that right.