This stopped being about the defense of the vulnerable long ago. Once the laws were put in place that make it illegal to show non-children as if they were children, it became thoughtcrime, the persecution of people because they think differently than the rest of society. If a photograph shows an adult dressed as a child, or is entirely computer generated, then sure it's yucky, but what's the harm?
So it seems like one place to break the cycle of hysteria is through lawmakers, to roll back the thoughtcrime laws to the level that they're only protecting the vulnerable rather than punishing people for having weird thoughts.
(Off topic: Of course, the same things can be said about the war on drugs, and the obvious damage that it has done, but lawmakers aren't exactly falling over each other to undo their damage in that area either)
I'd go a step further and say the yuckyness is in some cases purely subjective. You probably know about the guy who got into hot water over his manga collection. This is a clear example of a culture clash. For an american, or european, everything involving drawings of children in sexual contexts is at least distasteful. Strange as it may seem, there are cultures where "sexy" is closer to cute then to porn.
It's probably one of those things which 60 years after will sound _really_ weird, like blacks had separated restrooms or homosexuals liked to rape little boys.
You can not fight the materialization of thoughts without fighting these thoughts. If enough people think X, X will be normal sooner or later, even if it was illegal. It is normal that Women and minorities have equal rights with white men now (on paper at least), in contrast to 100 years ago. Think pedophiles won't be normal in 50 years? Sounds perfectly plausible to me.
if enough (democratically enough) people think that pedophilia is ok, why would it be wrong to legalize it? As a second counter argument, lot of people transiently have thoughts to kill, but its not legal even today.
So it seems like one place to break the cycle of hysteria is through lawmakers, to roll back the thoughtcrime laws to the level that they're only protecting the vulnerable rather than punishing people for having weird thoughts.
(Off topic: Of course, the same things can be said about the war on drugs, and the obvious damage that it has done, but lawmakers aren't exactly falling over each other to undo their damage in that area either)