I can appreciate most of what you said here, Shuriken, and I thank you for being open-minded enough to consider the uncommon views of others (and believing that a youth can consent to sexual activity with adults is definitely a minority viewpoint in THIS society). Once again, thank you...I just have a few additional comments.

As for CP: I just don't understand why so many people (including MAA's) are so paranoid about the specter of forced child porn. I AGREE (of course) that it should be illegal, but I DO NOT think it's very prevalent. And since most of us have never seen it, I'm not sure why we let the police and media convince us that it's so damn ubiquitous, especially since they almost NEVER allow journalists to view such films to verify what was on them in the first place. And despite the fact that cops have publicly reported being mystified as to why so many kids in these films seem smiling and contented, we STILL have people paranoid that such films display FORCED situations (such paranoid individuals will most often express the belief that the smiling kids were "prepared" by the pornographers and claim that it's easy to fake a smile at gunpoint or knifepoint). I DO think forced CP would be horrible, and it certainly CAN happen (for the record), but I have no good reason to think that oodles and oodles of it are regularly produced and distributed online. And I also question SOME of the statements I have heard from people who claim they HAVE seen it. Of course it should be illegal...I just don't think it's likely that a lot of kids are being forced into the imaginative CP "industry" that the police and media would have us believe brings in billions of illicit dollars a year. My main point: we should be cautious of CP, but NOT let that caution grow into emotionalistic paranoia (and I think a few of us in this community DO cross that line).

Also, I DO NOT support the death penalty, especially in instances that DO NOT involve murder. I believe the death penalty is barbaric, and as a society, we should be better than that. It also seems that among the developed nations, only Americans usually look favorably upon the idea of the state killing people in response to certain crimes...a statistic that is very telling.