Children's books from Playboy?

[nesguy]

Ok, Playboy isn’t actually publishing kid’s books. However, I recently was involved with a Kickstarter campaign to get some Japanese comics published by author Osamu Tezuka, and the company behind the project is Digital Manga Publishing (DMP) under their Platinum imprint. This is the 2nd Kickstarter of theirs involving Tezuka’s works that I’ve been involved in (the last being Barbara, a decidedly more grown-up story), and it successfully raised funds to publish four volumes of his family-oriented works (Unico, Atomcat, and two volumes of Triton of the Sea).

I’ve been doing some reading these past few weeks about supporting companies that do things a person doesn’t personally agree with. There was the Chik-fil-a thing last week, and on the flipside of the coin, I just read about how the CEO of Amazon late last month pledged a couple million in the other direction. Now, I’m NOT asking for a debate on those specifics, but it did get me to think about situations where I’d be in a positiong to support a company who does things I don’t personally support, and DMP came right to mind. A very large part of their business involves publishing material that is, at best, trashy homoerotic romance, and one of their imprints solely handles titles that are pornagraphic. I don’t think trashy romance or pornography are particularly healthy to a person’s mental or spiritual well-being (topic for a different thread perhaps), but here I am supporting them by buying titles under this new imprint of theirs. So, in essence, I’ve now bought children’s books from an erotic/pornagraphic publisher (hence my thread title!).

I’ve gone over several scenarios in my head about what this says about myself. My first justification was that, by supporting titles I do find worth my purchasing dollars, I am showing the company what’s worth their time, hopefully encouraging them to do more of the same. This falls short because, really, it all probably goes into the same pot and supporting the ones I like directly supports the ones I don’t indirectly. Second thought was that I should just avoid them in the future now that I’ve given ample thought to their business model and disagree with their practices. While this might be a solution for this single instance, I quickly realized that should I continue this trend, I will quickly be removing myself from the entirety of the retail industry for one reason or another. My final conclusion was that I should really worry most about what I do with my money and my own life, and worry less about how others (or businesses, even) run theirs. It’s one thing to discuss and advise others against jumping into the aspects of a company I disagree with (like, don’t buy eroticism/porn from DMP), but that might be where I draw the line.

That said, I was reading about “cooperation in evil” in another thread, and I’m curious how closely this applies to what I’ve signed on for. My priest suggested that I spend some time in contemplation and let God talk to me about the matter. He suggested that maybe I just don’t buy from this company in the future. I didn’t have a lot of time to get into a real discussion with him on the topic, but I reached my above decision based on that contemplation and having a couple of conversations with some other people in my life that have good moral grounding. I’d like to hear more thoughts on the matter, so I’m bringing it here for a wider discussion.

 

[Nelka]

Children’s books from Playboy?

Ok, Playboy isn’t actually publishing kid’s books.

 

[HisIsTheCrown]

Ok, Playboy isn’t actually publishing kid’s books. However, I recently was involved with a Kickstarter campaign to get some Japanese comics published by author Osamu Tezuka, and the company behind the project is Digital Manga Publishing (DMP) under their Platinum imprint. This is the 2nd Kickstarter of theirs involving Tezuka’s works that I’ve been involved in (the last being Barbara, a decidedly more grown-up story), and it successfully raised funds to publish four volumes of his family-oriented works (Unico, Atomcat, and two volumes of Triton of the Sea).

I’ve been doing some reading these past few weeks about supporting companies that do things a person doesn’t personally agree with. There was the Chik-fil-a thing last week, and on the flipside of the coin, I just read about how the CEO of Amazon late last month pledged a couple million in the other direction. Now, I’m NOT asking for a debate on those specifics, but it did get me to think about situations where I’d be in a positiong to support a company who does things I don’t personally support, and DMP came right to mind. A very large part of their business involves publishing material that is, at best, trashy homoerotic romance, and one of their imprints solely handles titles that are pornagraphic. I don’t think trashy romance or pornography are particularly healthy to a person’s mental or spiritual well-being (topic for a different thread perhaps), but here I am supporting them by buying titles under this new imprint of theirs. So, in essence, I’ve now bought children’s books from an erotic/pornagraphic publisher (hence my thread title!).

I’ve gone over several scenarios in my head about what this says about myself. My first justification was that, by supporting titles I do find worth my purchasing dollars, I am showing the company what’s worth their time, hopefully encouraging them to do more of the same. This falls short because, really, it all probably goes into the same pot and supporting the ones I like directly supports the ones I don’t indirectly. Second thought was that I should just avoid them in the future now that I’ve given ample thought to their business model and disagree with their practices. While this might be a solution for this single instance, I quickly realized that should I continue this trend, I will quickly be removing myself from the entirety of the retail industry for one reason or another. My final conclusion was that I should really worry most about what I do with my money and my own life, and worry less about how others (or businesses, even) run theirs. It’s one thing to discuss and advise others against jumping into the aspects of a company I disagree with (like, don’t buy eroticism/porn from DMP), but that might be where I draw the line.

That said, I was reading about “cooperation in evil” in another thread, and I’m curious how closely this applies to what I’ve signed on for. My priest suggested that I spend some time in contemplation and let God talk to me about the matter. He suggested that maybe I just don’t buy from this company in the future. I didn’t have a lot of time to get into a real discussion with him on the topic, but I reached my above decision based on that contemplation and having a couple of conversations with some other people in my life that have good moral grounding. I’d like to hear more thoughts on the matter, so I’m bringing it here for a wider discussion.

Did I understand well?
Suppose I gave money to a dictator and I know that half of it goes into feeding the hungry and half of it goes to repress his people.
Suppose that I buy Gospels from a Company that promotes abortions.
Suppose that I support an anti-abortion Organization that also defends racism.
What was the morality of these?

It is not easy to decide on these fields. Unfortunately life is not black and white.
You have a cup of red wine and it is red wine.
You have a cup of water and it is water.
Once we mix them we cannot separate them again. That is life, with evil and good so intertwined that you cannot destroy evil without sometimes destroy good also. That is the parable of the good who sowed good seed and came the enemy and sowed evil seeds and the workers wanted to weed them out. And Jesus said dont do that for with the evil ones it may come the good ones. In the Last Judgment all will be separated.
Now, coming to your case, you would want to hear my view.
I would care for the good, not caring what influence may it have on the evil that I did not intend.
I would buy Gospels from the Devil: I would not care what the money would be used for. Of course if I could buy books from Angels, I would buy them. But if the Angels ran out of Bibles and could not print them again, I would buy from the Devil.

I have seen Angels falling from the Sky, like with the Pedophilia problems with priests. I would not be astonished if Playboy would start publishing Good Books. Why not? If you can become evil, why can’t you convert. I have seen too many conversions already, people talking about God, from people I would never dream would convert and who led indecent lives.

Take St. Augustin, for example, my idol…

 

[nesguy]

Sorry for the confusions, but it was a relevant analogy if you read the rest of my post. “Children’s books from DMP” doesn’t quite illustrate the point in the thread title, but the situation of books from Playboy is still a likely scenario.

Did I understand well?
Suppose I gave money to a dictator and I know that half of it goes into feeding the hungry and half of it goes to repress his people.
Suppose that I buy Gospels from a Company that promotes abortions.
Suppose that I support an anti-abortion Organization that also defends racism.
What was the morality of these?

It is not easy to decide on these fields. Unfortunately life is not black and white.
You have a cup of red wine and it is red wine.
You have a cup of water and it is water.
Once we mix them we cannot separate them again. That is life, with evil and good so intertwined that you cannot destroy evil without sometimes destroy good also. That is the parable of the good who sowed good seed and came the enemy and sowed evil seeds and the workers wanted to weed them out. And Jesus said dont do that for with the evil ones it may come the good ones. In the Last Judgment all will be separated.
Now, coming to your case, you would want to hear my view.
I would care for the good, not caring what influence may it have on the evil that I did not intend.
I would buy Gospels from the Devil: I would not care what the money would be used for. Of course if I could buy books from Angels, I would buy them. But if the Angels ran out of Bibles and could not print them again, I would buy from the Devil.

I have seen Angels falling from the Sky, like with the Pedophilia problems with priests. I would not be astonished if Playboy would start publishing Good Books. Why not? If you can become evil, why can’t you convert. I have seen too many conversions already, people talking about God, from people I would never dream would convert and who led indecent lives.

Take St. Augustin, for example, my idol…

Thank you for the thorough analysis. I agree, life is not black and white, hence my own moral quandary on the matter. I suppose that part of my problem is that I sometimes wish life was a bit more cut and dry regarding these things .

Someone on another forum I posted the question to said he’d also buy children’s books from Playboy, as long as they were published under a different label and didn’t accustom kids to seeing the bunny logo (i.e. normalizing the image/association in their minds). I thought that was an interesting answer because it looked at the effect on the children rather on the adult who knows more of the situation. I think that’s a very important consideration that I hadn’t quite reasoned out. Indeed, it actually gives weight to the answer you’ve posted, as well.

 

[sacred_words]

Just the idea of Playboy putting out kids books is like Joe Camel putting out baby food: disturbing to say the least.

 

[HisIsTheCrown]

Just the idea of Playboy putting out kids books is like Joe Camel putting out baby food: disturbing to say the least.

If you went into the constellation of some Companies you would be surprised on the mixture of what they do business with. You would find examples like your Joe Camel, I assure you.

You know, for businessmen, money has no color. I have heard of a millionaire who wanted to make some investment. And they said one good chance was to grow almonds, for the market was short of it. He even did not know what an almond tree looked like. But he hired the right people and became one of California biggest almond producers.

Some businessmen have ethical qualms as the OP but for others, as long as it is not against the law, whatever goes is best as long as the profit is greatest, no matter is selling women without clothes or selling children stories.

 

[sacred_words]

If you went into the constellation of some Companies you would be surprised on the mixture of what they do business with. You would find examples like your Joe Camel, I assure you.

You know, for businessmen, money has no color. I have heard of a millionaire who wanted to make some investment. And they said one good chance was to grow almonds, for the market was short of it. He even did not know what an almond tree looked like. But he hired the right people and became one of California biggest almond producers.

Some businessmen have ethical qualms as the OP but for others, as long as it is not against the law, whatever goes is best as long as the profit is greatest, no matter is selling women without clothes or selling children stories.

Yup. It’s all about the $$$. Too bad there are so many companies out there that are willing to chuck ethics out the window in favor of maximizing their profit margin. Sad, really.