Comment Re:Typical Hypocrisy (Score 4, Insightful) 387
In short; it doesn't. If there is some marker that, logically, makes a thing unethical, then it's reasonable to make rules against it. But right now we deal with the difference between sex and violence like we used to deal with the difference in races; sure, one is sex and the other is just violence, and it happens that we're comfortable with violence, but not sex. But how much of that comfort is the result of exposure, and not the supposed underlying 'betterness' of it? Arguably, depiction of sex ought to be more acceptable, as it has little to do, in general, with hurting people - something that is clearly unethical.
If there was a good case to be made against the depiction of child molestation (and, given that it's a real problem, I'm not sure there is), then one might make policy against it. One might also make policy if it is decided that increasing the exposure to such things encourages it - but if that is the case, then we ought to seriously examine violence. And greed. And a host of other human sins that we readily portray, even glorify, but have no policy against.
But then, I come from a stance wherein I think that the safety of civilization comes from it's consistency in treatment of citizens. Inconsistency leads to injustice, which in turn spawns injustice - because if you can't count on the system to protect you, how can the system count on you to support it?