>Are you seriously defending child pornography right now? Where did I defend child pornography? I advocated finding harmless sexual outlets for pedophiles. Not

>Are you seriously defending child pornography right now? Where did I defend child pornography? I advocated finding harmless sexual outlets for pedophiles. Not the same thing. Here's a really good rule of thumb you can use when examining your own reasoning: if you find yourself attacking a point because you think it could serve as a premise in an argument for a conclusion you don't like, then your objectivity has been compromised. Arguments must be judged on the merits of their premises, never the other way around. In any case, research (e.g. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10508-010-9696-y http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10508-010-9696-y) suggests that legal possession of child pornography is linked to a decline in child sexual abuse rates. That does not imply that we should legalize the possession of child pornography, but it does strongly suggest that benign outlets for pedophiles are helpful in reducing child abuse. In contrast, the only evidence available that such outlets would encourage child abuse is a number of longitudinal studies on convicted child molesters. Such studies are incapable of establishing a direction of causation, and it is extremely likely in this case that the relationship is spurious (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spurious_relationship http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spurious_relationship). Both child molestation (A) and consumption of child pornography (B) are caused by the lurking variable of pedophilia (C). But this is crucial: real child pornography is not a benign outlet, and I never suggested that it was. What I said was that the problem is children getting hurt, not pedophiles getting off.