bryant

Clayton Cramer is fairly unhappy with Amazon because they’re selling a book entitled Understanding Loved Boys and Boylovers. It is an apology piece for pedophilia, and I feel pretty comfortable assuming it’s utterly vile.

I also don’t think Amazon should stop selling it, because of their position as a huge bookstore. Cutting off the channels by which a book reaches its readers is not strictly speaking censorship, but it’s a kissing cousin. This will become less of an issue as the Internet becomes a better medium for transmitting information, but at the moment I think a bookstore the size of Amazon still has an obligation to sell books without discrimination, however justified that discrimination might be.

Cramer disagrees.

“If Amazon.com sold a book titled, Fagbashing for Fun and Profit: How to Kill Homosexuals and Get Away With It or 99 Ways to Rape Women and Beat the Rap in Court, I would be just as incensed—and liberals would be hollering for Jeff Bezos’ head on a platter, instead of making excuses for Amazon.com publishing this trash.”

He’s incorrect. Amazon sells The Protocols of Zion, ??Mein Kampf??, and (if you’re feeling like being outraged from the right) The Communist Manifesto.