I am all about our rights. I think free speech is great. I do think just because we can doesn't always mean we should but then I have the tendency to actually listen to the voice in my head that is my moral compass. Today on Facebook a number of friends posted a link about a book Amazon was selling that needed to be reported as inappropriate. It is a self-published book called "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: A Child Lover's Code of Conduct". You read that right. A guide. For pedophiles. On how to behave with their "child lover". I'll give you a moment to go wash your mouth out and clean up the puke from where ever it landed. . . . . . . . . . . Back? Clean? Need a mint? I am disgusted. What is also disgusting to me is that Amazon is selling this trash. One blog has a response from Amazon basically saying that while they may not always agree with the material they are not in the business of judging but of selling to a massive audience whatever they want to buy. Like pedophiles who want a guide. The little blurb for this book reads:
This is my attempt to make pedophile situations safer for those juveniles that find themselves involved in them, by establishing certian rules for these adults to follow. I hope to achieve this by appealing to the better nature of pedosexuals, with hope that their doing so will result in less hatred and perhaps liter sentences should they ever be caught.
Really. An attempt to help pedophile situations safer and sentences lighter when caught by creating a code of conduct. AND Amazon is selling it. To people. For profit. All I envision, and with my imagination the picture is on an IMAX screen in 3D with major surround sound, are the creepy kiddy porn nasties who have not actually gone through with hurting someone buying this book. They get their little "guide" and then they put it to use and so another pedophile enters the world and another helpless child is victimized because this piece of lovely literature was available on Amazon. The writer disgusts me and Amazon disgusts me and I am no longer going to be shopping with them. I may HATE crowds but I will do my Christmas shopping in person rather than on this site. Despicable to support the sale of this filth. I went to the books page on Amazon a reported it as inappropriate with a wonderful email. I hope they get enough hate emails to remove it.
Update: Looks like Amazon heard all of the comments (there were thousands) it was getting and took it down. Or it realized how truly liable it could be in helping get a "tool" into the hand of pedophiles. They removed the book. Good for them.
Actually, the first time I read about pedophilia was in college. For a course, "History of ancient philosophies", I think it was. In the Collected Dialogues of Plato.
ReplyDeleteIn ancient Greece, Aristotle goes on about how a citizen (man) is required to take a wife to raise sons for the army, and find love with a ten year old boy.
It never tempted me.
Ancient Greece is considered the birthplace of modern (Western) civilization. Aristotle's dialogues - whether chronicles of teaching by an actual historical figure, or a teaching metaphor invented by Plato - are often referred to as introducing or capturing the thinking of the time.
Look at how ACORN was captured on video, helping a couple establish an underage prostitution brothel - and the most that happened was lose their funding for a few months. No jail time, no prosecutions.
My local school has a program for 7th and 8th grade expectant mothers. 6th grade pregnant girls aren't allowed in - there isn't room. This is a community of about 25,000 souls, and reasonable modern in ethics and morality. It surprises me that there isn't a jail term for pedophilia or statutory rape - or incest - for each of those pregnant girls.
On the other hand I am a bit surprised at your vehemence and trust in the law. When as a nation we tend to drive 5 MPH over the posted limit "because we won't be stopped" (except in Minnesota, where they ticket for 1-2 mph over, or did in 1984), we teach our kids about evading arrest, and not about obeying the law. You cannot see a 12 or 17 year old kid on the street with a cigarette or with alchohol - illegal most all over the US - and not teach our children that getting caught is wrong, but getting away with it is OK.
Is it a surprise that criminals, whatever their chosen laws to evade, want to keep a low profile and evade arrest and prosecution? Did you turn yourself in, the last time you drove faster than the speed limit, or approached a car from behind closer than the legal following distance (200 feet where posted over 45 mph, 100 feet under)?
The *average* marriage age in the American colonies was said to be about 12 or 13. That was our ancestors, the people that formed our nation in the first place. And not all of them married someone of a similar age.
Personally I feel that amorous encounters belong in a stable, mated relationship, which takes aware and willing (adult) consent and determination to form. Families perform the function of defining culture, and passing that culture, their beliefs and ways of living, onto the next generation. Families pass down that culture out of respect for the home the members were raised in, as they grow to accept and establish the roles their parents taught them by example and by choice. Anything that distracts from family life, from cheating to incest to whatever, splinters the family, the community, those involved and those that know and interact with those involved.
Pedophilia is wrong. It abuses the forming character and life roles of the child, it warps the adult, weakening families and communities. And Amazon.com should have exercised better judgment before listing it.