Need I point you to our previous debates on death penalty? (Of course you know I can't, because the search is broken, but I can google it all over again) You used to be against death penalty because it is not a deterrent, do you remember that? It is not a belief, it is a fact. Proven time and again in every country where it has been studied. And you perfectly know it, because you argue it at me when I defend death penalty.

Yes, but there's a key difference with respect to the death penalty, which I have discussed in-depth on more than one occasion: the death penalty is itself an act of extreme violence, and hence it is a huge cultural reinforcer that tells people that killing is okay if someone has profoundly wronged you. Of course, there are circumstances where killing is justified, if not exactly the moral ideal. I'm speaking of self-defense and even warfare (where an extreme large-scale threat to the public peace exists), but you and I both know that the death penalty isn't really about protecting society anyway; it's about revenge. In fact, if you talk to most people who support it, you quickly learn that that is exactly their strongest reason for supporting it. Thus, in my estimation the death penalty actually winds up doing more harm than good because it is self-undermining and therefore extremely illogical. Moreover, the state should not be in the business of revenge, any act of which ultimately dampens or even cripples its credibility.

None of that can be said of laws against sexual contact with children, which is a) overwhelmingly supported by society, and b) not self-undermining.

assume you will next argue that child sex is unlike every other act of lawbreaking and doesn't obey everything that we know about every other act of lawbreaking. Facts still aren't on your side. There has been a constant increase in acts punished and escalation in penalties given for all child sex crimes since ca. 1980. And yet, all child sex crimes have been on the rise all of this time. Antis argue that this is just due to higher reporting, but higher reporting can only go so far. 35 sustained years of increase cannot be explained away only by higher reporting. Child molestation is increasing. So much for deterrence.

Well, it IS unlike every other act of lawbreaking, because ALL acts of lawbreaking are different from each other. Hence, the reason they all have different punishments. However, in order to counter your point about the death penalty, it needs only be different in one key respect, which I have elucidated above.