@GrandLotus
there's a massive difference between depicting pedophilia and using pedophilia as fan-service.
I understand this. That recent controversial movie on Netflix is a good example of this; it displayed 11-year-old girls in a hyper-sexualized manner, which isn't alright. But the very reason it's not alright is because it contains
real people, making it borderline CP.
There's also the argument that "depictions of [X] will lead to [X] occurring more in real life", but that's simply not true. Extreme violence in video games doesn't lead to increased crime rates. The widespread popularity of incest porn doesn't lead to an increase in incest. And the sexualization of prepubescent cartoon characters doesn't increase the sexualization of real-life kids.
'Gateway drugs' do exist of course, but when it comes to people searching online for their fantasies/curiosities, the vast,
vast majority of those people know where to draw the line between fiction and reality.
Outlets for potentially harmful fantasies and behaviors are important. Banning this will do more harm than it will good.
If @Tamerlane were here, he might explain it better.