Amazon.Pedophile

October 13, 2002

by John F. Schmidt

A corporate goal of supporting “freedom of expression and providing customers with the broadest selection possible” led Amazon.com to defend selling books on pedophilia. When challenged, Amazon replied, “People have the right to choose their own reading material.”

With a hauntingly familiar excuse, Amazon declined to censor what its readers prefer to purchase and thus resisted pulling the offending books. The American Library Association also has defended the right of juveniles to view pornography on public Internet access computers in libraries. Same behavior; same excuse.

Critics of Amazon want the bookseller to drop distribution of such materials because it constitutes an implicit support of a perverted and illegal activity. Amazon cites First Amendment issues such as the right of free expression.

The free expression excuse explodes when we look at “hate speech.” Limits on free expression are already on the books for a number of good reasons, although “hate speech” is not one of them. Strangely enough, many of the same people so vociferously demanding hate crime legislation – which is a limit on free speech - are the same ones who resist laws against homosexuality and pedophilia. The common denominator is not a love of the Constitution or protecting the rights of the people, but a desire to live as they please with no criticism or limits on their actions – or their perversions.

Pedophile organizations like NAMBLA (North American Man Boy Love Association), the vile group committed to removal of all restrictions on “intergenerational relationships between males,” are strenuously attempting to weave a fabric of “scholarly” justification for their filth by publishing articles and books intended to establish some legal basis of authority for their perversion. Amazon is carrying some of these books. This year, the University of Minnesota Press published Judith Levine’s “Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex,” which attempts to challenge “widespread anxieties” about pedophilia. (1)

Such efforts are strenuous because the acted-out interests of this small group of men are illegal virtually everywhere. Pedophilia is a crime, and they want that to change. And they seem to be gaining ground. In Holland, it was once illegal for a man to have sexual contact with an under-aged boy, but no longer. Such acts have been de-criminalized through the efforts of a member of the Dutch Senate who once went to prison for such an act. It could, indeed, happen here too.

Pedophiles attempt to portray their perversion as a positive virtue, and smear their detractors as being motivated by “fear, ignorance and intolerance.” Try telling that to the boys, many of them men now and horribly damaged, whom pedophile priests of the Catholic Church molested. Try justifying pedophilia to parents when the objects of these men’s vile affections are their own sons or grandsons. No amount of books masquerading as “scholarship” will ever persuade loving parents to put their loved ones into the hands of such as these.

But the problem is not limited to the ranks of the Catholic Church, for it is not strictly a problem of pedophilia: it is homosexuality. Perhaps that is why Amazon doesn’t squirm at the complaints about pedophile books. It is as blind to pedophilia as it is to homosexuality.

Amazon’s reluctance to take a stand is a result of the toxic culture of relativism that has assaulted America and the rest of the world over the past several hundred years. We have come from a time when society in America generally consented to wholesome and righteous laws, and rejected perversions for what they were. God was King.

Finding a publisher for some of today’s filth would have been practically impossible in that day, and to obtain a willing distributor would have been out of the question. That’s because all would have agreed that the nature of the material was self-evidently corrupt and unfit for publication or distribution.

Then came liberal theology that questioned, with no more authority than crass pride, the truth of the Scriptures. Yet many followed that pernicious teaching, desiring to cast off the cords of God’s protective law, resolving to become little kings or gods themselves. So Man, in the form of the state, became King.

But that was not good enough. Embodied in the state was someone’s idea of right and wrong. So there has been an increasingly strident cry to eliminate all forms of judgment against a host of behaviors like homosexuality and pedophilia. In this new “tolerant” world every man is right, so it is not permitted for one man to censor another man’s conceits. That is where we are today. Amazon does not want to impede any man’s freedom to read anything he wants to. Every man is King.

Of course, as this rot continues to spread it will bring on a situation where the only persons whose opinions are not welcome are those who still honor, obey and speak out for the living God. We are practically to that point now.

Amazon’s behavior and lack of moral judgment is amazing to those who know right from wrong, but utterly praiseworthy to those who honor no king or god but themselves. But we must be warned that we can’t keep going toward a society where no moral judgments are made at all. That society will end up being a hell on earth.

It will be one result of Amazon.pedophile.

(1) “Amazon Defends Sale of Pedophile Book,” WorldNetDaily, 10/5/02, by Art Moore.

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John F. Schmidt has written numerous articles over the last decade. Politically, he is an Alan Keyes-type Republican. Along with his wife, he has organized voter drives in Pennsylvania, and been active politically since the 1990 elections. His livelihood, until recently, was spent in automation engineering for a large global equipment manufacturing company, specializing in coal mining. WANB in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania hosted Schmidt's weekly talk radio program "Issues and Answers." His writing is intended to relate the headlines of today to the foundation of eternal truth - the Scriptures. He currently resides in Palm Beach County, Florida. Visit his website at: Inalienable-Rights.org

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