I read an editorial in Time Magazine in reference to Amazon.com’s recent issue involving a Pro-Pedophilia book. The author, Meredith Melnick, argues that we may be better off focusing on “encouraging treatment rather than ignoring the existence of these ideas.” You can read the editorial for yourself here.
While I agree with Melnick’s proposal that we encourage treatment, I think that ignoring the existence would have occurred had the public not reacted so virulently to Amazon’s allowance of the sales of the book. We do, indeed, need to focus on the treatment of pedophilia, but we also cannot afford to ignore the fact that, by allowing a product like this to be available on the market, we are in effect legitimizing it and coming ever closer to plummeting down the slippery slope of cultural compromise.
While I hate to pull out the old adage of “love the sinner, hate the sin,” this is a clear cut case where this needs to be invoked. While I wish no harm to the book’s author, it is disturbing that this kind of material could be sold in the public marketplace of ideas. We can’t afford, as a society, to allow this to receive even a veiled stamp of approval of at worst, deviant, at best, accepted, behavior.
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