Hmm… interesting. In a lot of hentai there are obviously underaged characters drawn, but in American released it’s always plastered on the box “ALL CHARACTERS ARE OVER 18.” although most viewers have said that the statement is most usually bull.
In one particularly celebrated case, a DA in Oklahoma in the mid-90s set out to impound all copies of the award-winning film The Tin Drum on account of “simulated portrayal of a minor”. This boneheadedness only made the courts’ job shooting down the law all the easier.
As to the “potential gateway” argument, most courts have held that “maybe, perhaps, in the worst case scenario, it could happen, ya know” is not a good enough basis for statuting a crime. CP laws already exist for the protection of children. The individual is responsible for his actions, and if he knows what’s good for him he’ll remember it’s a crime to reenact “Lolita” with the neighbor’s niece.
As mentioned with the Mike Diana case, there is a difference if you can prove to a court the material is obscene as per the legal definition thereof. Then the First Amendment does not protect it any more.
Now, yes, technology to create “virtual CP” exists. At professional grade, AND it would look sort of like the Final Fantasy movie. For some reason CG has a heap of trouble animating a real-looking person. Tragic to say this, but to the real perv out there, it’s still far cheaper to just get some actual child before his camcorder for his raw material. As late as this last summer there were big busts of CP sites and sources (Eastern Europe), and what was found was real photos. Recent real photos. Gigabyte after gigabyte thereof.
Meanwhile the cartoon-porn folks are too busy trying to bittorrent scanned Japanese comic books featuring the Digimon girls naked. Hardly a threat.
IIRC, the Supreme Court dismissed this argument in the Ashcroft case. They declared that this reasoning is too speculative to base a law upon.
The problem with this kind of assumption is that people are much more driven sexually than they are by the desire to commit violence, and I think almost anyone who has had an opportunity to view both (I’m speaking primarily of males here; women seem to be less influenced by pornography) will say it piques their sexual urge much more than a violent movie spurs them to want to engage in violence. For this reason I don’t think it’s entirely accurate to presume the logical extension of each results in an equal response to the stimulus.
Actually the logical end in your analogy is that it will fuel the fire to watch actual killing on tape, not do the killings themselves.
Either way, the point stands. Gateway movies are like gateway drugs… they don’t exist.