Year: 2010

He’s just a disinterested advocate for child safety:

Thousands of people on the Internet may be protesting Amazon’s decision to continue sales of a self-published book on pedophilia, but at least one person stands by its decision: the author.
Philip R. Greaves II, author of the electronic book, “The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover’s Code of Conduct” . . . argued that his critics are misunderstanding the point of his book.
“They’re accusing me of wanting to hurt children. They’re accusing me of encouraging pedophilia and all these other things. But that’s not why I wrote the book,” the 47-year-old from Pueblo, Colo., said. . . .
“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,” the author wrote in the product description. “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 [sic] sentences should they ever be caught.”

Note that Greaves (a/k/a, “Ray”) misspells “lighter” and that he misspelled “variety” in the description of his previous book, The Grand Book of the Godless and Free: The Fall of Faith and the Rise of Reason:

Phillip R. Greaves, 2nd. is a rogue scholar with respect to the topics of religion, sexuality and politics. “The Grand Book Of The Godless And Free,” is a collection of essays regarding these general subjects with titles exploring the nature of “God” to parenthood for single-gender families. This is a contraversial volume presenting the often unique views of the author. Thus far, everyone who has read this work has been impressed by its wit and depth. Ray (as he is more commonly known) began his path to knowledge and enlightenment at the ripe old age of ten. When he left the Baptist tradition in which he had been raised and sought-out a new faith beginning with his studies at the local library. He was already familar with sex by the age of seven. Soon he met a varity [sic] of people from foreign lands and cultures, from whom he acquired much additional knowledge. Later he joined the Christian cult of the Way Ministry, followed by his joining the Baha’i Faith at the age of eighteen. Next, Ray joined the U.S. Army. Eight years later he embraced the view of rational disbelief, which he is happy to share and discuss with the world. Mr. Greaves is an admirer of Aristotle and Ayn Rand’s Objectivism.

Why are these misspellings and the general clumsiness of Greaves’ writing relevant? Because Greaves is not a professional writer.

He does not write for money. His book is not commercial product. Ergo, he is an amateur, whose writings are the product of deeply felt personal beliefs in (a) the non-existence of God, and (b) sex with children.

Greaves himself says that he was “familiar with sex by the age of seven” and we have reason to believe that he thinks that’s just hunky-dory. He gave an interview to The Smoking Gun:

In an interview today, the author at the center of a controversy about Amazon’s sale of a self-published pedophile’s guide told TSG that he has sold exactly one copy of the book and revealed that he was involuntarily hospitalized following a “mental breakdown.”
Noting that, “I have what they call manic depression,” Phillip Greaves, 47, said that he himself was not a pedophile and said that “the best advice I can give a pedophile is accept that masturbation is your best friend.” . . .
Speaking from his Colorado home, Greaves said that he was introduced to sex at age seven by a 10-year-old girl. “I learned about oral sex that day,” he recalled. Greaves said that he continued to engage in sexual activity with other children until he was 15 . . .
Greaves denied ever being arrested, but revealed that his mental troubles “came to a head about three years ago” when he suffered a “mental collapse.” . . .
The breakdown was so severe, said Greaves, that he was involuntarily hospitalized for about nine months, and spent some of that time in a state mental facility. When he emerged from that hospitalization, Greaves recalled that he decided to go back to writing, which he first started doing while in eighth grade. . . .
He said [criticisms of his book] were based only on the book’s title since, “I’ve sold one copy so far.”

Please understand that I’m not arguing for banning online writing by psychotic perverts — where would DailyKos be without them? — but I am saying that this points to the truth of Samuel Johnson’s maxim: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.”

In the age of online DIY publishing, anyone can become an author. But what is the point of publishing a book that no one will pay to read?

But why bring Ted Rall into this?

On the one hand, everybody hates media “gatekeepers” — the publishers, editors and others who exercise control over what gets into print or onto the broadcast airwaves. Yet free-for-all amateurism has its pitfalls, too. The profit motive is often said to inspire evil, but most evil tends to be a not-for-profit enterprise.

Exit question: What will Objectivists say about being endorsed by Phillip “Ray” Greaves?