Quote:
Originally Posted by tammycravit
OK, but here's the thing. I would absolutely agree that children need to be protected from sexual abuse by pedophiles. I doubt you'd get much disagreement there, at least among the members of this board. But, the piece you've left out of your analysis is how banning this book will actually make children any safer.
Do you honestly think there are people out there who feel like they might want to have sex with a child, who say to themselves, "Hmm, I wonder if I can find a book about having sex with children…nope, I didn't find this one book, so never mind."? Do you really, truly, believe that?
Do you seriously think this is the only piece of information out there that advocates sex with children? Do you honestly think that, in the absence of THIS SPECIFIC book, the pedophile will simply give up, instead of looking elsewhere to validate his feelings? For that matter, do you honestly think most pedophiles look for external validation in a society that almost universally condemns them? They abuse children despite a vocal and consistent message that their behavior is immoral and criminal.
So, I guess my question is this: Assuming that you're absolutely correct that children need to be protected from pedophiles, how is banning this book going to do that?
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Books and sites like this absolutely increase victimization as their message mitigates the power of one of the most important, yet tenuous, considerations a pedophile uses to keep a check on acting out his impulses - their desire not to do real harm.
Having said that, no, I agree that we can't stop that message from getting out.
To me, the point to the public's convincing Amazon to remove the book is
taking a stand.
It's a matter of showing that
-No - there is no grey area here.
- We see that this is not your ordinary controversial material.
- We are not afraid to make the value judgment that says we recognize that
advocating pedophilia is uniquely indefensible, with no redeeming qualities whatsoever,
thus we are not afraid to draw the line there.
And that is disturbingly necessary. It sounds like you've been out there like I have, and I'm sure you've also seen how many people, including parents and people in authority, just don't .
If you look around here even, you see a sad number of people demonstrating that they don't think pedophilia is really that big a deal.
People at Amazon call others prudes, laugh about them being too uptight, and cut sickening jokes, rooting the sicko on.
Someone even said here that a book advocating pedophilia was no worse than a book about hunting pets.
This is why I am so glad the country took such an overwhelming stand yesterday to make the statement that obviously needs to be made.