Legalization of child pornography?

[TaraJo]

Nothing about anything that can be classified as child pornography should be legal. We, as adults, know what pornography is and what it isn't. A judge should be able to tell the difference between a suggestive photo of a child and one of a child that a family member took for memories. Parents should not be afraid that their photos will be misconstrued, but neither should a family member be protected if the picture really is pornography. Also, if it can be proven that the picture, though not suggestive, is one that was used for sexual (blech) reasons, the person should be prosecuted. And, anyone who says it should be illegal to make it, but not to view it is a fucking asshole. Without demand, no one would be making it. Of course, accidental viewing is another story.

Two primary points I wanted to ask here, though.

1) Your idea seems to come down to policing intent and that's hard to do. I mean, guys could be masturbating to pictures of 10 year olds in a JCPenny catalog or the medical pictures you can find online or in medical textbooks. In those cases, no, the picture was obviously not intended to have sexual intent, but what about this case, where whether or not the pics are for sexual purposes is ambiguous? What about beauty pageant girls who have pics taken that pedophiles could easily use for sexual purposes? If someone were using those pics for sexual reasons, even though they had been taken with no sexual intent, would that fall under the category of 'legal?'

2) You're also assuming judges generally make good choices. I've seen some pretty fucked up rulings by judges over the years. People who could not have possibly committed the murder that they're in jail for have been put to death, cops walk around with no accountability even though they're beating people senseless and in this case, Judge Jacqueline Hatch blamed the victim for her being sexually assaulted. What's more, we're making it more difficult for judges to let guys off when they have one of those borderline materials. We get tough on crime, especially on sex crimes, and part of the result is that judges have no choice but to come down hard on people who haven't harmed anyone. It doesn't help that DA's in our justice system want to pump up their incarceration rate more than they want to make sure they get the right guy.