I'm a pedophile.
No, you're not.
I get what you're trying to do, but that's just playing word-games. Society and the law do not agree with Wikipedia. In 2008 I was returning home from an international flight when I was singled out for a 'random' inspection at border control. I have kind of dark skin and I hadn't shaved in a couple of weeks, I was looking pretty middle-eastern. I knew I would get picked. They took my laptop, my camera, my phone, all of my memory cards and hard drives, then told me I was free to go, and that someone would contact me about getting my stuff back.
I heard nothing from them for almost a year. Finally I got a call telling me they had found child porn on my computer and that I wouldn't be getting it back. I had a lot of porn on that computer, the vast majority of it was (adult and legal) Japanese porn. I also had a lot of homemade videos of my girlfriends, all of whom would have appeared to be obviously at least 18. Whatever they found would have been a tiny fraction of the overall drive and was mostly Russian teens.
Yes despite knowing that I wasn't
primarily attracted to pre-pubescent children, and with absolutely nothing to suggest that I had ever actually harmed a real child, they contacted my friends, my family, and many of my former colleagues and acquaintances to warn them that I was a pedophile and that they should not let me anywhere near their children.
People should be judged on their actions, not their orientation; and paedophilic actions are demonstrably harmful and therefore rightly criminal.
As long as you're agreeing that the thoughts themselves shouldn't be illegal. What would you think about simulated child pornography such as animations, stories, etc., that do not use real children? Under GW Bush, those were made illegal too, making it truly the only thought crime in US law.
The problem here is that there is no objective test to measure whether an individual is old enough to consent to a particular action, be it getting married, or having sex, or receiving medical treatment. But societies have to draw these lines somewhere, so they do, and these lines are therefore somewhat arbitrary.
I agree, there should be a line, but I think the age of consent should be lowered to the same age that a juvenile could be tried as an adult. Otherwise, it's just hypocrisy.
As individuals, it makes sense for us to operate within the law of whatever country we're in.
I'm not a big fan of the appeal to authority. I don't think laws are always right or should be blindly followed.
Possibly; but the production of child porn should be illegal. Do you agree?
Yes.