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Thanks for your post - very thought-provoking. I had forgotten about the virtual porn case and remember reading the threads on it here when it was first decided. A VERY tough call, and that's an understatement. And you're right, there is a legal difference between using actual children as pornography subjects and writing about illicit acts with them.

I disagree with one point you made, however. You included "thinking" in with "writing" - of course thought cannot be legislated, thank God. But writing can, and justifiably so in certain circumstances. I doubt I'd get away with writing a manual on how to assassinate the president.

Quite possibly my mistake is to look at the legality of the situation rather than its constitutionality, as other wise FReepers have done. As another pointed out, Amazon is not violating anyone's free speech by refusing to stock a book, and like I said, there are limits to free speech. I heard a lecture tape regarding the ACLU recently, done by a Mr. Donahue from the Catholic League, during which he outlined the framers' intentions for free speech. He very clearly demonstrated that freedom of expression is an entirely different thing than free speech. As Aquinasfan said earlier, the framers never intended for it to protect obscenity.

I'm not sure how your examples about Noam Chomsky and Yasser Arafat indicate encouraging child suicide bombing. My point was, this book about man/boy lover relationships seems to say it's normal to do such things. It legitimizes it in an "I'm OK, you're OK" fashion. Such as if someone wrote a book outlining the benefits of using children as suicide bombers. Same with gay murder - agreed, we find tons of fictional examples of every horror, but they are hardly handbooks to that effect (except to a few fringe loonies maybe).

Anyway, I do appreciate what you're saying. But tolerating the sanctioning of such bile in the name of free speech is a bit much, imo.

Writing is a form of speech, which is an expression of free conscience. The manual on how to assassinate the president would be treading a tendentious line, mostly because for the manual to be at all useful it would probably violate several cornerstones of national security, which is a different sort of restriction on speech and one sparingly applied. However, manuals on general bomb making, murder, etc are regularly published.
I agree that there is no legal argument for Amazon saying it "has" to stock the book, especially since it has already done so in the past. Market pressures can be far more effective than coercion in these matters. Now that it has been put before them, continuing to stock the book does constitute a moral choice on their part, and one that should be heavily criticized as such.

However, it does not follow that therefore that constitutes some sort of limit on free speech in the public domain. Whatever scholars may think the framers "intended" (which I think is a pretty thin argument), it is certain that in the media and in common parlance the legal term of obscenity is often bandied about for all sorts of things that it does not cover. The supreme court has ALWAYS erred on the side of liberty rather than censorship, as any form of scholarly or artistic meaning, however perverse, makes virtually any written or spoken or digitally imaged thing legal. Obscenity most often comes into play when an act is committed; ergo, writing about molesting animals, while abominable, is not legally obscene. Molesting animals in practice, especially in a public area, is likely to be found obscene.
The only legitimate exception I have heard is that of local standards, where a community can decide for itself what is obscene and extend the definition as it chooses to banning books, etc. It is rare for that to be applied in larger communities.

So, while I have not heard Mr Donahue myself, I can logically infer that I would very much disagree with his sentiment: freedom of expression and speech are inextricably linked. I see where he is coming from, morally, but I think the application of govt coercion in these matters is inevitably a two edged sword, and social pressure is the correct response.

Finally, Chomsky, in his own disingenuous way, legitimizes the acts of nearly every barbaric and cruel foreign nation that opposes the US, from the Khmer Rouge to the Taliban. He embraces the Palestinian cause and defends with complex semantical arguments the legitimacy of both their cause and their means.

Arafat, meanwhile, is the puppetmaster behind those bombers. TO praise him is to praise a monster, and to hide his evil is to aid his cause.

As for the "gay murder", I think the biggest reason there is not many books on this on Amazon is that there is absolutely no demand for it (beyond those fringes).

There is however, a large demand for these books trying to legitimize child abuse. Thus, we must make it MORE expensive for Amazon to keep them than to lose em.