Slinky is exactly right here, and those who have dismissed this possibility need to consider the real history...but also this theoretical objection...
Obscenity is *already* illegal. Therefore it would seem that those looking to treat child porn, including virtual child porn, with distinct legislation are doing one of two things...they are either looking to add an entirely redundant law or they are looking to lower the bar as to what obscenity is when children or teens are depicted.
Now it is hard to see what the point of an entirely redundant law would be.
So it would seem that the intent is to lower the bar for obsenity in the case of child pornography. (And many of the comments here would tend to concur).
But what will it take to lower the bar and make it easier to convict consumers of child porn including virtual child porn?
The current bar for obscenity is the so called Miller test where *all 3* of these questions have to be passed:
"(a) whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,
(b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law, and
(c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value."
Now which of these tests is going to be made easier to pass?
In (a) asking for standards stricter than those held by the community would be undemocratic and arbitrary.
In (b) bypassing specific state laws or the requirement to be offensive also seems undemocratic and arbitrary.
So...
If the intent of anti-virtual child porn laws is not to be simply redundant, and the intent is not to be simply undemocratic and arbitrary...
Then the only remaining intent of such a law would have to be to make (in C) certain materials illegal *even if* they have "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value".
Let me repeat that. We can deduce that the only reason to have these extended special anti-virtual child porn laws is the censorship of materials that also have serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
It should be no surprise then that some of us worry about the preservation of works like Lolita, American Beauty, and even Romeo and Juliet.