[shasarak]

Those are two very different things, of course; the first is simply about thoughts and feelings, the second could well be preparing the ground for actions.

The issue of whether it is 100% impossible for any form of sexual contact between an adult and someone below the age of consent ever to be anything other than life-destroyingly traumatic is an interesting one; regardless of one's point of view, I do think it's a shame that it is, to all intents and purposes, forbidden even to ask the question. Whenever anyone presents something to me as "so obvious that no one could ever possibly disagree with it" every alarm bell in my brain starts ringing.

There's no question in my mind that, legally speaking anyway, the status quo makes no sense at all. In Britain, for example, an 18-year-old man can have as much consensual sex as he likes with his 17-year-old girlfriend, but if he takes a photograph of her with no clothes on he becomes guilty of manufacturing child porn and can go to prison. Similarly, if the two have sex, it's legal; but if, after sex, he takes some money out of his wallet and puts it down beside the bed, that makes him a sex offender. It's even the case that a picture of a woman aged 30 can legally constitute kiddie porn if she looks like she's under 18, or even if it's blindingly obvious to anyone that she isn't under 18 but (in the opinion of the jury) she is trying to look like she is. They're now seriously debating whether someone should be thrown in prison for sexually abusing an underage cartoon character - something that is already illegal in Germany, I believe.

Laws like this come about because people aren't thinking straight. The stance is effectively "we have to be able to catch this particular type of criminal before they commit any crimes" - as if that actually made perfect sense. And to hell with the Presumption of Innocence!