Amazon.com Review
Is there such a thing as a legitimate sexual relationship between an adult male and an underage boy? Most civilized people would answer emphatically "no," and
Understanding Loved Boys and Boylovers won't convince them otherwise. Defensive in tone and amateurishly produced, this monograph uses both pseudo-scholarship and anecdotes in its attempt to justify its target audience's actions and feelings.
--Christopher Hart
Product Description
This book was an outgrowth of the uproar that resulted from the 1998 publication of what has become known as the "Rind Report" (
Psychological Bulletin 124 (1) 32-53). This scholarly report has been attacked on all sides by the pseudoscience of victimology and the child sex abuse industry, winding up with a "condemnation" by the US Congress, most of the members of which had never even seen the report.
Understanding Loved Boys and Boylovers has, in turn, has been attacked by people ranging from a west coast book publisher who threatened to boycott amazon.com to a British tabloid which printed bare-faced lies about the content of the book. It has been called pseudo-science, filth, something that "civilized" people would reject out of hand, and has been pejoratively misidentified as being a "how-to-molest-children" manual targeted at those who are attracted to boys, which it most definitely is not. It is really aimed at the general public, and "is neither a manifesto nor a set of demands, it is a plea for reasonableness and understanding." (p. xi).
What the Rind Report and this book have in common, however, is that many years down the road neither has been factually discredited, although the vicious and vacuous attacks are still ongoing. After the first printing was exhausted, requests for copies kept coming in to the publisher, so this 2009 printing was authorized, with only minor corrections, updates, and a one-page preface added to the 2000 text. It would be Pollyannaish to dare to hope that the vitriol and venom have run their course, but it is hoped that some of the more reasonable members of society will now take the time to find out about the "other side" of these issues; if not from this book, then from the growing body of academic and professional literature which is finally deconstructing and dismantling the hysteria and mythology of the counterfeit child sex abuse industry.
