I agree that it's time for a re-classification of what exactly is a "child" and what "child porn" is. To me, a "child" is a very young innocent - a sexually non-sentient pre-pubescent. Just because a child might "know" what sex is, the fact that they are not sexually-sentient means that they don't have the hormonal urges that life brings on at puberty. I find porn involving these children to be one of the most morally repugnant of sins.
However, these's a huge difference between the little 5, 6, and 7-year old Jon Benets of the world and the fully ripe, adult-sized (and usually adult-appearing) teens. Most of these gals are as developed as they'll ever be and probably know more about sensuality than the average 25-year old in the age when most of us here grew up. They may lack the maturity to enter into complex legal contracts, and they may exhibit a lot of the ill-guided behaviors of youth, but it's a real political stretch to refer to them as "children." They are, in fact, children only in the strictest and most arbitrary of legal senses - prohibited by their elders from even having a chance to make choices of their own and learning from them the consequences of their actions. Can you say, once again, "NANNY STATE?" I knew you could.
I will never condone the exploitation of minors - but there needs to be (and will NOT be due to ludicrous political reasons) a re-examination of the entire issue of Age Of Consent, Adolescence vs. Childhood, and the Age Of Majority.
This is all brought to you by the Laws Of Unintended Consequences. A century ago, people left school at 13, married and started families shortly thereafter and became productive adults by their mid-teens. The educational establishment, ever hungry to expand its power base and silently acquiesced to by fathers wanting to clutch their daughters close to the bosom of home until later in life, have false-prolonged "childhood" PAST childhood, PAST almost all of true adolescences and into real biological adulthood.
And then they have the temerity to call someone just a year or so short of their artificially-inflated age of adulthood "a child."
Child porn is dead dead wrong. And so is what society has done to keep people classified artificially as "children" when they're not.
Michael