How about no. Look up on wikipedia what countries have ruled fictional CP is legal, but CSAM with actual children is as illegal as here. Then check the level of technological development, financial development and political stability of them. Not seeing a pattern? Then check the number of sexual assaults in those countries compared to countries of similar development levels. Now check the number of sexual assaults across ALL ages and genders in countries where all pornography is illegal.

Now, I’m not going to make any absolute claims. All I know is that actual psychologists have spoken out about the line between harmless (as in, would never consider harming a child) pedophiles and people who would be rapists even if they weren’t sexualizing kids, and 15 year olds have spent time in a prison for age-of-majority sexual offenders because some asshole pedo creep with hacking skills used the teenage boy’s computer as remote storage for CSAM material and the teen was arrested for someone else’s crime.

I get why this is a controversial topic. I hate people who harm kids too. Just realize that laws meant to “protect kids” can end up harming kids (not to mention adults who are not guilty of crimes) or even fail to recognize that people hurting kids goes way beyond pedophile sickos and non-sexual violence against kids has itself become a serious problem yet is not being acknowledged.

The laws as they are need to start taking a more generalist view of this, because when pastors can get away with this disgusting behavior and judges can send a completely innocent 10 year old to juvie for a $500 kickback and not even flinch when the boy commits suicide, or a judge even sending an autistic boy who killed someone to the death penalty instead of accepting the insanity plea?

It says we (adults in general) don’t really care about children, only looking like we do.