I have to admit while I believe in first amendment rights, I find that any company choosing to sell a book about pedophilia a heinous crime. "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover's Code of Conduct" by Philip R. Greaves II, is not something that Amazon should be offering to it's sellers. From all of the outpouring of outrage in the public Amazon has pulled it from their Kringle page.
While this in itself is a wonderful statement, people have bought it already and Amazon let it be put up for sale in the first place. Maybe Amazon needs to have someone watching for content that is illegal in nature, making something like this available to the public is just wrong.
Amazon is a private company, which means they had a choice in allowing it to be there. Many online sites such as FaceBook and Twitter have started groups against this book. There is thousands of entries online about it as well all running along the same lines of outrage. I don't think that if my children went on Amazon to make their holiday wish lists would I want them to even see this listed. Being a public site with anyone able to visit their site they do need to ensure that a child couldn't get into something they shouldn't, as now a days kids surf the webs in school. I guarantee that they are unsupervised doing so even at home. Yes the man who wrote this book has the right to write it... However that doesn't make it a good idea, nor appropriate.
I had posted my views on a site that I belong to online and most of the people (not all mind you) jumped me for saying Amazon shouldn't sell it because of 1st amendment rights, I also had a couple defend what I said about it being disgusting and that Amazon should remove it. It does show me that people do believe in freedom of speech... but that they don't care what that "speech" entails... as one of the people who responded to it said "A line has to be drawn somewhere"
Bright Blessing and Blessed Be...
What was that quote you posted? Something about liberty at such a price wasn't worth it? I totally agree! There is NOTHING worth the risks to a child by allowing a book like this to be published and sold. Certainly a book isn't going to convince a person to become a pedophile but for those who already have the inclination and are fighting it, this may very well give them "permission" to go ahead. It might give them the justification they are looking for and if even ONE child is hurt, the price was FAR too high!
ReplyDeleteI'm shocked (though I shouldn't be) and disgusted that people would defend this author's right to free speech and Amazon's right to profits but not give a hoot in hell about a child's right to go unmolested.
Shocked me as well...
ReplyDeleteThe quote:
ReplyDelete"There is no liberty worth having which would allow something like this"