« Gold, I tells ya | Main | Bah humbug »
December 20, 2010
Wrong on many, many levels
History - Lincoln's Assassination - First Woman Hang by the US government, originally uploaded by Robert Lz.
Apparently this fall some fellow was selling a book that was, essentially, a guide for pedophiles. It's basically the most horrible thing I've ever heard about. Amazon stopped selling it after a boycott, and its author was rightly vilified. However, nobody arrested the author, until Polk County, Florida, stepped in:
"You cannot engage or depict children in a harmful relationship," said Polk County, Florida, Sheriff Grady Judd as he described the Florida obscenity statute that officials used to charge Phillip Greaves with distribution of obscene material depicting minors engaged in harmful conduct.
The self-published author was arrested in Pueblo, Colorado, on a Florida felony warrant after undercover detectives in Polk County purchased and received a copy of the book through the mail. He will have to be extradited to Florida to face charges.
Judd said the book was Greaves' last copy, which he autographed before sending out.
Greaves and his book, "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: A Child-Lover's Code of Conduct," gained national attention earlier this year after Amazon.com defended selling the book on its website despite angry comments and threats of boycotts from thousands of users.
Nowhere do basic constitutional rights and a desire to squash those rights collide more forcefully than when dealing with pedophilia. Most people would be happy to send convicted pedophiles onto a deserted island, or summarily shoot them. Barring that, they want them banned from parks, prohibited from living within a mile of a school, and other restrictions.
And so, with this book, there is a basic tension: is a guide to breaking the law itself illegal? It would seem to me that the freedom of speech mandates that such guides are okay. And, I would think, teaching how to molest children is also protected speech, even if it is the most horrible thing one could possibly do.
This Florida law, then, isn't about freedom of speech: it's about distributing obscenity, which enjoys no First Amendment protections. I do not know what is in the book, so I cannot say if it is obscene. However, and even though this law is being used to prosecute a man who advocates pedophilia, this offends my sense of justice. He has not committed any criminal acts against children, nor is there any suggestion someone has used the book to commit a criminal act. No matter how noble the cause, this simply does not seem right to me.
Furthermore, this quote from the sheriff is rather chilling:
"The message is very clear: If you write a book, if you sell that book, if you transmit that book to anyone in our jurisdiction, then we will investigate you and arrest, because our goal is protect the children," the sheriff said.
entry no. 1532
Posted at December 20, 2010 06:15 PM