Two sets of rules

Retail giant Amazon has been accused of double standards and discriminatory practices. The online retailer this summer removed from its platform a number of books penned by Christian authors, who once identified as gay or lesbian.

Anne Paulk is the author of Restoring Sexual Identity: Hope for Women Who Struggle with Same-Sex Attraction, and also the director of Restored Hope Network, an ex-gay network of interdenominational Christian ministries and individuals. The agency offers counseling, conversion therapy, advice for families with LGBT relatives and outreach to churches.

“Amazon told [her and other authors] that their books, which detail how Jesus transformed their lives and sexual identities, were in ‘violation of our content guidelines,’”(article by Brandon Showalter, Christian Post, August 30, 2019).

Another book, Orientation, and Choice: One Man’s Sexual Journey by Catholic attorney, David A. Robinson, was also banned. On inquiry, Amazon claimed that this book also ran counter to its content guidelines.

While Paulk said she is hardly surprised books like hers are being taken down from the platform, she exclaimed “… It is literally criminal what the site still offers for sale.” Such as academic work, Pedophilia, and Adult-Child Sex: A Philosophical Analysis.  It was authored by Stephen Kershnar, a distinguished professor at the State University of New York. This professor unabashedly defends the sexual exploitation of children.

And Amazon promotes his book as one that “provides a philosophical analysis of adult-child sex and pedophilia. This sex intuitively strikes many people as sick, disgusting, and wrong. The problem is that it is not clear whether these judgments are justified and whether they are aesthetic or moral.”

Do this professor and others like him really need to wonder whether adult-child sex is taboo and wrong? Just the phrase “adult-child sex” screams the unnaturalness of the relationship.

When one thinks about an adult, words such as experience, mature, father and mother come to mind. Whereas, words like son, daughter, innocence, inexperience, and youth come to mind in our consideration of a child. Physical intimacy somehow does not naturally factor in between the two.

But Professor Kershnar would like to recalibrate our natural way of thinking. Obviously, he does not see anything intrinsically wrong about pedophilia. To him, it is not immoral.

However, God’s view is completely opposite to his and others’ who are promoting pedophilia as normal behaviour and practice.

Leviticus 18 addresses all kinds of sexual deviance. And while the passage particularly focuses on incest, it is safe to apply its principles to pedophilia as well.

But here it is, we have the largest and most influential retailer in the world selling books with titles such as Daddy, this is so… Wrong: A Big Collection of Taboo Stories, and yet banning wholesome Christian books!

Titles like Desires in Conflict by Joe Dallas; Growth into Manhood: Resuming the Journey by Alan Medinger; Achieving Heterosexuality: A Universal, Scientific, and Faith-Based Perspective by Marie Davidson; and Straight Talk about Homosexuality: The Other Side of Tolerance by Richard Cohen have been banned.

However, despite the ban, these authors are determined to share their life’s journey and promote their books.

Meanwhile, Voice of the Voiceless, an organisation that defends the rights of former LGBT-identified persons and those with unwanted same-sex attraction, has launched a petition aimed at reversing Amazon’s ban. So far, it has achieved over 19,000 signatures!