The dissonance is accepted in this case because of the repulsive nature of the crimes, as determined by our current social consensus.
Philosophical purity is very appealing, but ultimately the justifications we use for why the law is the way it is only have to stand up long enough to convince most interested parties that we're doing the right thing.
Stated another way, the law is being ignored because these particular criminal defendants' rights don't matter when they're inconvenient, based on the crime(s) they were accused of.
When the law is influenced by societal consensus the legal system becomes a farce.
I think when the law is not influenced by societal consensus it becomes a farce. In many ways the societal consensus on morality is law wheather it maintained by the state, vigilantes or in this case a legal fiction which is some combination of both.
Well biologically the person has inherited some genes that function in such a way as to lead to their obsession with young people. At the end of the day this is very much a mental problem that can be remedied with bioengineering. Not much else you can do for these people.
To criminalize it in all of its forms, is the same thing as criminalizing any sexuality. Perhaps one day we'll create an algorithm that can generate these images without anyone being involved -- does that sound distasteful as well.
At this point even artful depictions of a sexual nature are illegal, criminal offense.
So is that to say that it's completely a choice and so we should treat these people as criminals and simply jail them with harsh sentences if they don't conform to our societal norms?
Has homosexuality? In general in many of these cases they is definitely some element of OCD involved, as in hoarding millions of images, and the criminal offenses are set up in a way to penalize for each image using the same sort of logic as above. But then that's common for other people with what are considered normal sexual orientations, having a huge porn collection.
I mean the deviant element of this is that it's all so taboo, I mean after all "think of the children" (tm). We should treat it as any other crime and try to do harm reduction.
There was an episode of radiolab or something where a guy had a brain injury and became an obsessive child porn collector. The DA argued that even if he had an illness, if he was cognizant enough to hide his activity from his spouse, he was cognizant enough to seek help instead of continuing his behavior in secret.
Philosophical purity is very appealing, but ultimately the justifications we use for why the law is the way it is only have to stand up long enough to convince most interested parties that we're doing the right thing.