Thursday, November 11, 2010

Of Pedophiles, the First Amendment, and Amazon.com

Oh good heavens, I'm riled up.

I don't use this blog as a way to rant and rave about different things that catch my attention, I do believe in standing up for what you believe in. I think if you save your rant for those most important to you, you will have much greater power to inflict change. I feel the need to get up on my soapbox on this one. What started this whole thing for me was my attention pointed to THIS article by BlogHer.

Many of you are aware of the outcry yesterday over the self-published book available for purchase on Amazon.com titled "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure." The author's book description is as follows: "This is my attempt to make pedophile situations safer for those juveniles that find themselves involved in them, by establishing certain 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."

The content of this book contains helpful hints like where to buy condoms to fit anyone under the age of thirteen. You know, to make these situations safer. Apparently he shares details of intimate encounters with children from the child's point of view, where the children are not feeling victimized, but instead feeling loved and nurtured.

Feel free to go throw up. I'll still be here when you come back.

While I understand that Amazon cannot monitor everything that is self-published on their site, this clearly violates their content guidelines and should have been removed upon first protest, and not only after thousands agreed to boycott Amazon.com via Facebook and Twitter; and after the news got a hold of the story. (Did you know that on the news websites they have a place where you can tip them off to a breaking story? And from my experience yesterday, they get back to you quickly when it's a story like this. Good job, Q13Fox News.) And yes, as of this morning, the book is no longer for sale at Amazon.com.

There seem to be two sides to this debate. To clarify, I never heard a single person in support of this book or it's contents, that's not the issue at all. But I have heard a few people in support of letting it remain on Amazon.com as a result of the First Amendment right to freedom of speech and the press.

The argument being that this guy who published this book has the right to do so under the First Amendment, and that by making an exception in this case can lead to a precedent of not allowing offensive material to be published just because the majority doesn't like it. I get that. But offensive is a matter of opinion. Illegal is not.

Yes, it's true that Amazon.com sells "Mein Kampf", Hitler's anti-Semitic text. And we "do not claim they are complicit in hate crimes against the Jews." (Quoted from one of my Facebook comments yesterday.) While I agree that this may come across as a bit of a hypocritical situation, it is not at all. What Hitler did was horrible, but it was history. We cannot ban all books with information about the holocaust under the guise of not complying with hate crimes. History books are filled with horrendous crimes against all types of people, but this is not the issue at hand.

The issue being, are people allowed to publish whatever they want under the First Amendment, even if those things are instructing others how to best commit a felony?

I think we all know that the First Amendment does not protect us in all situations. I cannot go into an airport and yell, "I have a bomb!" I cannot go through a White House tour and say, "Where's the president? Cuz I'm gonna kill him!" Free speech does not apply to every American all the time.

One commented stated (and no, I'm not going to name names, as my friends have the right to state their opinions to me in a private manner through Facebook without the threat of being publicly blogged later,) this is the type of thing that can lead, through many steps of course, to a total censorship of anything remotely pornographic or offensive, including the ban of breastfeeding and breastfeeding materials.

Is this the truth? Well, its a stretch, but I could see how that might be justifiable in the minds of some.

By letting this book remain, we keep the author's rights intact and don't rock the boat, so to say, starting a floodgate of censorship. OK, good point.

But it doesn't end there. We can't assume that by doing nothing, nothing will be the result.

So let's go there. Let's pretend that the book hadn't been pulled from the shelves. What then? Do we honestly believe that by protecting the First Amendment rights of those who are purporting to commit a felony, that we are not setting a precedent by doing so?

What about the right to peaceably assemble? In the same world where we look at the what if's, where we use our imagination to see what is down the road, do we not see a group of pedophiles having informational meetings, protected under the First Amendment? Do we not see their meetings advertised with little fliers at the grocery store, "Pedophiles: learn how to love children and not get caught," with tear-off tabs with an e-mail address or phone number? And God forbid anyone protest these little gatherings where pedophiles share secrets and tips for committing their crimes, I mean, we surely can't violate the rights of those who do things that we feel are offensive.

Or can we?

Where do we draw the line? Doing nothing is doing something. When you refuse to act, you are making a choice. Standing in support of Free Speech is noble, and I have to say I have great admiration for those who stood in support of the First Amendment in this situation, considering how horrendous the topic is. But how far should our freedoms go?

I love the quote by Zig Ziglar, "One of the greatest disasters of our time is our universal acceptance of the word "tolerance" as a great virtue." I have no tolerance for pedophiles. I have no tolerance for the belief that they have a right to inform other pedophiles how to violate and ruin the lives of innocent children.

I would sincerely like to know why this book isn't considered probable cause for searching this guy's house and arresting him.

What are your thoughts?

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

The Wrath Of Drew

Once again, this is a post started a couple weeks ago, and never published. I finally found twelve seconds where Drew was strapped in somewhere, and enamored with something so that he isn't trying to unbuckle himself and fling headfirst across the kitchen floor, and could finish it. Enjoy!

Drew is at it again.

My sister-in-law, Holly said to me a while ago, "You know, I used to think that God gave you twins as paybacks since Emma was such an easy baby. Now I know God gave you twins to prepare you for Drew."

I'd have to agree.

(And no, we don't actually believe that God EVER does things to "get back at people". It's just kinda funny.)

Yesterday Drew showed his abilities to push the chair across the dining room, use it as a stepladder to get up on the arts and crafts cabinet, and then use something he found to knock the cup of kid-safe scissors down on top of himself, although he managed to catch a few pair on their way down and play with them.

No, I didn't hear it. Yes, I do have to pee on occasion.

He also got into my sewing stuff and tried to use a straight pin as a q-tip. I caught him just a half-inch before he would have pierced his eardrum. I also found him playing with a barbecue lighter, and he also pushed the chair up to the stove, where he snitched freshly-baked cookies off the pan.

We have been using high places as a way to keep him out of stuff, since he has known for months how to open the child-proof locks. Now, with no place to put anything that can be used for terror and bodily injury by Mr. My-Abilities-Clearly-Surpass-My-Age, we are definitely up a creek made of feces without a propelling device.

This morning, I decided to ease my dinnertime burden and put dinner in the crock pot. There are two beef roasts, about five pounds of potatoes, and a few carrots, onion, and garlic cloves simmering away, making my house smell lovely right now. It was a good decision, but not without sacrifice.

For while I was busy chopping and searing, Drew was getting into the scissors again (apparently, Emma didn't listen when I told her to put them away after she did her homework last night) and put three slices in his favorite John Deere shirt that he has been wearing for two days because he refuses to take it off.

Fan-tabulous.

My friend Erin came over to help wrangle the kids so that I could get more stuff done, and even with both of us in the room, watching closely, Drew managed to sneak over to the iron, climb up on a chair and burn himself, all in about three tenths of a second. Luckily the iron had been unplugged, but it hadn't cooled down enough yet and he managed to get a good blister on his hand. However, he didn't cry, just said "HOT!" and got down. I didn't notice the blister till later, I had assumed that since he didn't cry, he didn't get burned. Silly me, forgetting about the fact that he's not really human.

I am working on a new keep-Drew-out-of-stuff plan. Either I need to get one of those government-issued hand print readers that will only allow cabinets to be opened by me and Marty, or I need to constantly order take-out and get myself a catheter bag, so that I have the ability to do nothing but follow him around and watch him ever-so-closely every second of every day.

Or, I need a bigger house. I try not to live in the world of "if only", but seriously, I really think an office with a door that could lock would solve all my current problems.

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