I'm upset after reading the articles about this, too.
But I have found that the terms "homosexual" and "homosexuality" tend to be ones used almost exclusively by the Christian Right, whereas progressives tend towards terms like "gay", "queer", etc.
So it doesn't surprise me that a search for "homosexuality" on Amazon returns those results.
It's just like the term "Darwinism" is used by creationists instead of "evolutionary theory" which is favored by the scientific community.
The use of one particular term over another has a lot to say about one's worldview and beliefs, and those would be reflected in titles of books and the search terms used for them on Amazon and other booksellers.
Phil Dutra
· 7 months ago
the twitterverse is all over this. just search #amazonfail
Licia
· 7 months ago
Livejournal is all over it as well. Google "amazon rank".
Thanks, John, for giving this a wider audience.
samiinh
· 7 months ago
Off topic, but this is an opinion piece that needs to be shared: "Could gay rights be threatening the First Amendment? Religion increasingly losing court battles"
No more than black civil rights did. If people are unwilling (not unable) to do their job because of their religious bigotry (i refuse to call it faith), then they are in violation of anti-discrimination laws and can justly be punished.
Frankly the days where anybody could say their bigotry was religiously inspired are in short number, and good riddance.
cowboyneok
· 7 months ago
Yes, I certainly feel sorry for all those Neo-nazi professionals who can't discriminate against people of color! It so infringes on their rights to not be able to use their religion and belief, they are better than people of color, to discriminate! chortle...
John Aravosis
· 7 months ago
Yeah that was a sloppy article - the Washington Post simply republished a religious right press release. And as Gridlock notes below, the civil rights of gays and lesbians threaten the first amendment as much as the civil rights of African-Americans, jews, latinos, women, people with disabilities, or anyone else do.
UncommonSense
· 7 months ago
"Bastard out of Carolina" has been re-categorized?
Based on what? I read that book when it came out. I don't recall anything in that dealt with gay themes, not that that would justify reclassifying it in the first place.
What, is Dorothy Allison gay? Is that what this is about?
That's insane.
Is "In Cold Blood" going to be subject to the same treatment?
What is Amazon thinking?
twitches
· 7 months ago
Dorothy Allison is an out lesbian, but there's no gay content in the book that I recall.
UncleGlenny
· 7 months ago
One of the classifications Amazon lists it under, however, is "gay and lesbian":
"..., an Amazon spokesperson said that a glitch had occurred in its sales ranking feature that was in the process of being fixed. The spokesperson added that there was no new adult policy."
Riiiight.
Licia
· 7 months ago
Yeah. Tell that to Mark Probst. Screencap of Amazon's letter to him about their policy to de-rank his YA book.
Licia: I know. It's one of those glitches that builds up slowly and magically goes away when money starts getting lost.
In all seriousness, a commenter at the LiveJournal metawriter community has made a guess I think may be correct. In a nutshell, Amazon is willing to "de-list" books which deal with adult themes, but they are too lazy or their programmers are too stupid to be consistent about it. As a result, terrible cultural prejudices are reflected -- even magnified -- in the outcome.
As a hetero computer geek who doesn't even read much fiction, I am freaking livid over this. If I wanted some ninny to provide me with a pre-Bowdlerized card catalog, I am sure there's a service that can do it. When I shop, I want to see what is available, dammit.
anonone
· 7 months ago
"Brokeback Mountain" still has a sales rank, so I don't think this is necessarily true.
They can't be that stupid.
Licia
· 7 months ago
Oh, they can.
Search amazon front page on the term "homosexuality" & the first hit is “A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality ” (still ranked top of a list of books about how terrible & morally wrong being gay is). On the other hand, “GLBTQ: The Survival Guide for Queer and Questioning Teens" is completely invisible & unranked (as are similar books) unless you know exactly what you're looking for.
And John Barrowman's autobiography had its ranking stripped LOL.
Gridlock
· 7 months ago
that's absolutely HIDEOUS! Preventing homosexuality? Oh come ON.
What's next, throwing chicken bones around to divine the future or eating a cracker and saying it's a god?
TheOriginalLiz
· 7 months ago
I just did the search you mentioned - the second book listed was "You Don't Have to Be Gay: Hope and Freedom for Males Struggling With Homosexuality or for Those Who Know of Someone Who Is" , then "For the bible tells me so", then "Can homosexuality be healed?" Am I sensing a theme here?
Mel
· 7 months ago
For some reason the movies are not being messed with. People have books out that are being delisted but the movies aren't. Really rather odd.
filkertom
· 7 months ago
This is going to sound like too many people playing the Telephone Game, but I trust it. I have spoken with author Sarah Zettel, who is on a science-fiction-writers' mailing list. She says that author Daniel Abraham talked to Amazon and heard, "It's a known issue, and they'll have an answer about it tomorrow." Stay tuned.
Mel
· 7 months ago
I had one book delisted because OMG, the word sex is in the title. And yes, please google AMAZON RANK. They are now saying they were removed because of customer complaints. All in one weekend, right. www.sb-tb.com have been following the story for awhile. It first was that they had adult content, but even YA books are being pulled. I am in in the process of pulling the amazon links from all my book pages.
lynchie
· 7 months ago
We haven't moved forward. we have moved back 50 years. Bigotry is alive and well here in western Pa. Let's begin burning books and censoring everything but Fox. This country is so hung up with voodoo christianity it can't function. I agree with your point on CNN when the country should be shitting itself with the economic crisis, the bailout and two wars we are worried if two people want to make a life committment and enjoy the same rights as everyone else. Sad really.
Mel
· 7 months ago
I have never understood the fear of gays or of gay marriage in general. But then, those idiots believe that being gay is a choice.
Taylor
· 7 months ago
Can you say "PR Disaster"?
I knew you could.
All right folks head on over to Powells.com for all your future book purchases...
Mel
· 7 months ago
LOL, last statement is they will have an answer in the morning. As they said on smartbitchestrashybooks.com, there is going to be an early Monday morning meeting in the PR department. People might not think it is important, but for a writer, it is. Dear Author has a really good explanation about this and also some new tidbits that this started back in Feb for some authors: http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2009/04/12/amaz...
Ken Clark
· 7 months ago
I'm the webmaster for two gay authors. One is fine and the other's have no ranking listed for his novels and they were darn hard to find via search even when I searched with his name in quotes. Totally not fair!
Scarlet
· 7 months ago
OK, I'm confused.
What gay content does "The Diving Bell and the Butterly" have?
lilybart
· 7 months ago
It's French isn't it?
Doesn't that make it gay to most idiot Americans?
burro
· 7 months ago
This strikes me as being very un-Jeff Bezos. What does he care?
Seems like the bottom line and good customer service has always been his focus. He's had a huge brain fart on this one if it's true. And if it's true it won't stick for long.
Didn't he see Dobson waving the white flag? Who is Amazon trying to impress? If it's true.
Indigo
· 7 months ago
Maybe porn sells faster?
Edith
· 7 months ago
Gee John, in light of this development, are you still going to tell all your readers like you did earlier that they should shop at amazon.com? Amazon donates massive amounts of money to conservative PACs. If you call yourself progressive or liberal, never shop at amazon.com
offspring
· 7 months ago
there is a book I saw at the bookstore recently and let me tell you it was scary, it was full of incest rape murder, marring multiple people against their will, genocide, torture, animal abuse, child molesting and it is out there for all to see it is called the bible yea that was the title man one scary book but it is there for all the kids to see
Judas Peckerwood
· 7 months ago
Amazon was scum before this and will be scum after this blows over. Try patronizing your locally owned businesses before they're all gone.
Some Canadian Guy
· 7 months ago
You mean that when my prof assigned History of Sexuality for my Society, Surveillance, and Identity course he was really making me read porn? Awesome!
I can hardly wait to tell him
lillieannerose
· 7 months ago
Censoring of any book for any reason should be illegal.
Ben
· 7 months ago
I just wrote a 5-star review of "Giovannis Room" over at Amazon. Hopefully others will do the same and we can get support for the book. I mentioned in the review that Amazon is trying to censor gay novels with its new homophobic policy.
MikeinSanJo
· 7 months ago
Hasn't Amazon always been the Walmart of the online world? Deciding what people do and don't WANT to see and what is and isn't BEST for all Americans!
Well, if they're gonna do it, let them do it in the light of day.
I'm with Shawn below. If we're "protecting" the sense and sensiblilities of people who can't think for themselves, then by all means
BAN THE FUCKING BIBLE!!
That's got to be one of the most horrible collections of fables and morality stories ever written.
If every one of Aesop's Fables wound up with the main character slaughtering entire tribes of peoples, being swallowed by the earth because they don't have the right beliefs, or being forced to murder their own children to prove that an imaginary diety is so much more important than the child of the sycophant, surely they would have pulled Aesop's off the shelves.
Actually, someone decided to tag the bible as 'gay' because of David & Jonathan... I just saw the post in passin on LiveJournal. We'll see what comes of that.
Yukio
· 7 months ago
It may be that the National Organization for Marriage and their friends decided to concertedly complain en masse to get Amazon to pull them.
But searches for other "provocative" items such as personal luibricant, personal vibrator - even gay men - bring up all sorts of things.
Searching for "Monette, Paul" brings up lots of book listings, none with any cover art until you get to the next level down of navigation.
Meanwhile, there are almost a quarter of a million books returned when searching for "divorce."
Steve LaBonne
· 7 months ago
I just cancelled an Amazon order (ordered on Powell's instead) and sent them a blistering explanation of why. Fucking morons.
Rev_Sacrilege
· 7 months ago
Ooo, can't wait to watch the fireworks...
existenz
· 7 months ago
Even books about gay people who were killed in the Holocaust have been de-listed. I looked at "Hidden Holocaust", "The Pink Triangle" and "The Men with the Pink Triangle". No sales ranks!
These books show up in general searches, as do Andrew Sullivan's books. But it's really weird that Amazon would suddenly come down with this ridiculous policy. They should not be in the business of classifying or censoring books based on content.
OK, you know what is weird....when I just searched for 'homosexuality' on Amazon, the 'auto fill-in' thingy that brings up and predicts relevant terms that you may be searching for in the search window, just brought up the following choices.... homosexuality and the bible homosexuality and the politics of truth homosexuality and christianity homosexuality and American psychiatry
Very odd.....
cowboyneok
· 7 months ago
That would just about "prove" to me that it was deliberate!
res ipsa loquitur
· 7 months ago
There's an alternative: Barnes & Noble ranks everything that's sold at least a copy in the last six months, they have a good gay and lesbian section, and the company is very gay-and-lesbian friendly. Plus, the Riggios are big Dem supporters.
mcd410x
· 7 months ago
The ranking is back for "Running With Scissors" -- though 150,000th seems a bit low.
kourio
· 7 months ago
Ok, I followed suggestions by contributors below and did some searches for "homosexuality" etc. and found, as they did, some odd prioritization of books emphasizing "cure" etc. I looked down and found this:
"Find books, Bibles and more in our new Christian Books store."
Note the word "new." Did amazon somehow create a special priority for a "Christian Books" store? Might this explain why gays and lesbians have been demoted?
By the way, I've alway been driven to laughter in conventional bookstores by the section called "Religious Fiction." It just seems redundant to me. LOL
MobtownShank
· 7 months ago
I wonder if this blog will continue to plug, link to and gush over Amazon like it has in the past.
dave g
· 7 months ago
I wrote to their press director expressing my feelings. I've also deleted my amazon account. I'm going to use Powells and my local bookstore from now on.
The best part is, I'm just about to start grad school and have about $1,500 of books to buy.
Sue William Silverman
· 7 months ago
And it's not just gay books targeted. I have a book about recovering from sexual addiction, which has no graphic scenes, and it was deranked from amazon. Another book of mine, about incest, still has a ranking--and it's actually more graphic. I noticed that "Lolita" still has a ranking, too.
Susan
· 7 months ago
I am not sure what's up with Amazon but that was a pretty dumb move. Did it mean Adult Books under porn or just mature audiences only???
realitythink
· 7 months ago
So John, Will you finally wise up to the fact that Amazon is evil on many fronts? Many of us have tried to point this out to you in the past.
FMFFIHS
· 7 months ago
Dumbledore was gay.
Will they delist the harry Potter series? Or did that moneymaking center escape the "glitch"?
Powell's. Yeah, it rocks.
steve talbert
· 7 months ago
I think one of the best things to do is sign into your Amazon account, or create one as a potential customer, and send an email asking for an answer to this question so that you can continue to use them for purchases.... and put in the email that it "obviously can't be a technical problem or else this very example would not have occurred"...
>>>But the fact that Joseph Nicolosi and Linda Ames Nicolosi's A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality. is still ranked when Heather Has Two Mommies isn't, says it all. <<<
steve talbert
· 7 months ago
In my opinion, deleting accounts just takes you out of the equation. It is best to stay a 'potential' customer and put alot of books in your shopping cart and favorites but don't buy them.
MOTHERF*CKERS at Amazon Books can kiss goodbye to my business, which is substantial. Amazon Bookstore in Minneapolis (lesbian owned) won a HUGE settlement against Amazon using THEIR copyrighted name, in the same business. GOOD!
Mike
· 7 months ago
I'm looking at the Amazon page for "Giovanni's Room" and they have sales figures. But "Rubyfruit Jungle" does not. This could very well be a glitch of some sort, or some sort of concerted effort. I don't know. I'm holding off on the outrage until I get more facts. But it does look like something's up.
Mike
· 7 months ago
Doing some more poking around...
"The Joy of Sex" does not have sales figures. But the Victorian porn classic "My Secret Life" does. "Fanny Hill" does not. A few gay mysteries I've read lately do not. Something does not seem right, esp. when one straight porn classic has ratings and another does not. I am curious.
Mike
· 7 months ago
"10 Smart Things Gay Men Can Do To Find True Love" has ratings, while "10 Smart Things Gay Men Can Do Improve Their Lives," by the same author, does not. Puzzling, to say the least.
Lee Rowan
· 7 months ago
As one of the authors stripped of sales ratings by Amazon - I write gay historical romance, steamy but not excessivly graphic - I just want to thank you for picking up this story.
Amazon is now claiming this was a 'glitch...' but has not repaired the damage. Please keep on them.
Thanks again!
cowboyneok
· 7 months ago
A "glitch" my ass, until they realized how many sales they were going to lose!
Lee Rowan
· 7 months ago
Yeah, well... some of us at The Macaronis gay historical group had been following the weirdness for a few days; Mark Probst queried as a publisher (more than a mere writer, apparently) and finally got an answer.
Yeah... I think Amazon may have caught on that a lot of glbt people buy online for privacy and personal safety.
What changed lately? Running Press has a new gay romance line, and its first two books, Transgressions by Erastes and False Colors by Alex Beecroft, had made the crossover from 'gay romance' to 'historical romance' and even 'historical fiction.' They made it out of the ghetto... and there's a faction in the romance industry that wants to keep that genre defined as 'one man, one woman, no sex until after they've tied the knot.'
Happy ever after for gays is the Big Scary... We're not supposed to even want that, right?
cowboyneok
· 7 months ago
They are under the gun on this one. I will never buy another book from them, again, if they don't get this right and get it fixed QUICK!
sueinNM
· 7 months ago
Lee,
I've been a romance writer for 15 years, with three major NY publishers. I'd be happy to see gay/lesbian romance included with mainstream romance ... unfortunately, the publishers have to bow to the pressure of the large percentage of 'straight' romance readers who live in the Bible Belt. One day, love will be love (between consenting adults), and there won't be any barriers in the publishing world.
Chris From Maine
· 7 months ago
sounds like some right winger at Amazon convinced them that gay novels were perverted pornography.
Outrageous.
cowboyneok
· 7 months ago
Off topic, but seems like another double standard:
Was there some sort of news blackout regarding the Sandra Cantu case in California because it was Easter and the monster who has admitted to killing her, stuffing her in a suitcase and throwing her into a pond happened to be a Baptist Sunday School Teacher? I haven't seen anything about it today on cable news. There is this about her family holding Easter Services, and its just bizarre. The focus of their Easter Service just seems very strange:
I would think there would be even more focus on the victim, and less on the murderer, at their church? In fact, if it were me, I don't think I could bring myself to attend an "Easter Service" at that church.
I'm thinking if the murderer had turned out to be some man who was a drifter, instead of a "prim and proper Baptist Sunday School Teacher from a minister's family" then it would be more like Polly Klaas and 24/7 non-stop coverage!
JustAGuy
· 7 months ago
There was actually an extended report on the local CBS TV affiliate in the Bay Area Yesterday (April 11th). I was a little surprised at how much information was provided and how much time was devoted.
So, there's some anecdotal evidence that there wasn't a total media blackout.
-S
cowboyneok
· 7 months ago
My biggest problem, in my mind, was the focus of pain and anguish from the murderer's family's perspective in the article. I'm sorry, but what about the victim? The story had this bizarre feel of "How horrible for a Baptist family to have a murderer in their midst!" I could care less about them at this point. All I can think of is how outraged and devastated I would be if something this monstrous happened to MY CHILD!
Fed Up
· 7 months ago
Queer politics + paranoia = queer political paranoia about amazon.com. Just shut up and go take a xanax, already.
mark
· 7 months ago
jump up my queer ass......LOSER
Garygw
· 7 months ago
I ditto Mark
mark
· 7 months ago
Amazon you picked the WRONG people to screw with if you want to sell books and movies. FIRST you will issue an apology to OUR community THEN you will get rid of this filthy ranking system.
JustAGuy
· 7 months ago
I'm not too surprised... Amazon barely manages to score a "B" (80%) on the Human Rights Campaign's Equality Index. Not terrible but not great either.
What really might motivate Amazon to rescind their policy is the bad publicity that this and similar sites can generate towards them.
They also might listen to some of their own gay and lesbian employees. Any GLBT Amazon employees hang out on AmericaBlog?
-Sean
gothamnotes
· 7 months ago
Simple.
Amazon's loss is Barnes & Noble.com's gain.
Garygw
· 7 months ago
It does seem they're scrambling for a fix. . .at least David Sedaris has his ranking back.
Garygw
· 7 months ago
"Heather Has Two Mommies" not so much. . .
jj78
· 7 months ago
This site tracks sales ranks, and it shows it's been down for around 4 days which is a long time to have a glitch like this...
It's probably a good thing that they do this. I am gay, but I would not want my little brother (he's 16) to find anything gay. For example, I hide my copy of "Milk" because I wouldn't want him to see it, even though there is nothing inappropriate. I am really uncomfortable having him know that homosexuality exists. It's not that there's a problem with being gay; I just don't feel the general populus should be exposed to it.
mark
· 7 months ago
Dave you aren't gay, but you play one on the internet. There isn't a 8yo on the planet that doesn't know about gays/lesbians. If your brother is 16 and doesn't know, maybe his brainstem isn't as strong as yours.
terje
· 7 months ago
I am hoping that Dave's comment was intended as sarcasm...
mark
· 7 months ago
Maybe it'd be worthwhile to take Amazon's top ten bestsellers, and write a review for them, which all begin. "The book was predictably heterosexual....." maybe that would get some attention.
LimaBN
· 7 months ago
Regents University continues to churn out graduates. Now that the federal government is not guaranteeing them full employment, they have to go somewhere.
thejerseyguy
· 7 months ago
Time for a boycott of amazon?
JG.
nickiuk
· 7 months ago
If i follow this right then if books by gay men are now adult (i hope this applies to Lesibans (Discrimation)) then so would be books by bi-sexual and trans people.
This is wrong as i am a Male to Female Trans authoress who has no sex scenes in any of her work, other than intermated scenes
Anyone got a site containing the news story.
Chris
· 7 months ago
Nicki,
For example: 1. go to amazon.com 2. Search for Heather Has Two Mommies. (The field may even may offer to auto-complete the title for you.) 3. Whoa, there's no such book. Only another book discussing the controversy over this nonexistent book. And other books written by the same author that somehow is associated with the nonexistent book Heather Has Two Mommies. 4. Oh, but if one chooses "Books" from the search, then you will get around this non-ranked filter and voila!
The "story" broke on Twitter. You can follow this subject on this Twitter search results page:
This is not a glitch. No business invents a new algorithym and then doesn't check what happens when they run it, before making it public.
Very strange. WHO complained is what I want to know, and who listened?
SCLiberal
· 7 months ago
I quit shopping with amazon when I found out they sell books on dog and cock fighting--which are felonies in most states. Barnes and Noble has a good selection. Better yet, shop at your local bookseller. If you still have one.
roy
· 7 months ago
Just sent to Amazon through "Contact Us" function in their account page:
I am very disappointed in the unfair and discriminatory policies Amazon.com has employed against books with gay or lesbian content or characters.
Please close my account.
Angela Hoy
· 7 months ago
We boycotted Amazon last year and filed a lawsuit against them when they told us we have to pay them to print our books. See: http://antitrust.booklocker.com
Does anyone know of a second person to whom Amazon told this? I expected to find in the comments on his blog another person who complained to them and got the same response. I'm not saying they didn't say this to other people. I'd just like to find a second source for this story. Thanks.
(& there are a couple of others, I'll see if I can locate links)
LawMichigander
· 7 months ago
Well we knew this would happen in the quest for money corporations get paranoid at the ultra unchristian church's that propagate hatred of others instead of leading by example.
NealB
· 7 months ago
Virtually Normal still shows the Amazon.com sales rank.
But A Boys Own Story does not.
Maupin's book Tales of the City has the ranking.
Mysterious Skin by Scott Heim has rankings for both the book and the movie.
Latter Days video has a Movies & TV ranking.
richmx2
· 7 months ago
I work for, and am published by, an independent publisher in Mexico (as far as we know, the only English-language book publisher in the Republic) which makes distribution a nightmare north of the border. Small, independent presses are likely to be hurt more than Amazon by this, and while I agree this is an egregious situation, it's not easy getting listed on those sites, let alone getting ranked, etc.
An Amazon boycott is going to hurt people like me more than it is Amazon.
nicho
· 7 months ago
Why would Amazon pander to the Christian right? They don't read books. It's only the leftie liberals who read books. If Amazon panders to the right wing, that's pretty much shooting themselves in the foot.
Still, this is very strange -- and I don't buy the "glitch" answer. Glitches don't work that way.
OTOH, it could be some low level Christian freak in Amazon's programming department who decided to earn his Creds with Christ by sabotaging gay literature.
C
· 7 months ago
Maybe I'm in the minority here, but when I hear "adult" I think adult theme which includes porn, but isn't exclusive to porn. Why does this even matter? Do people looking for gay themed literature really need it to be categorized that way to find these books? I never find a "suspense" book or harry potter book by looking in the appropriate section. I think this is just making a mountain out of a molehill.
otakucode
· 7 months ago
Corporate censorship is disgusting and will only get worse. People carp on and on about how censorship is only bad if its required by the government. BULLSHIT. ALL CENSORSHIP IS WRONG.
The idea that concepts, words, images, etc can affect human beings in a way so direct and impossible to mitigate on the part of the individual that they need to be restrained for ANY reason is absurd. It is baseless. It is false.
There has never been a single event in the history of the world that would have been made better by censorship, and there will never be such. There are countless events made worse by censorship, and will be countless more.
Corporate censorship holds our culture in its grip, and it is crushing us. The next generation has a new form of art - the videogame. The most heavily, stringently censored form of media ever conceived of. The platforms are controlled by corporations so very afraid of the idiocy of bored housewives that they have neutered the medium, and are working on cutting off its arms and legs as well.
Do not stand for this. Every time you see a black bar on TV, or hear a bleeped word, or hear of a company editing a film or a videogame, or see a videogame or movie rating, or see a "warning" about content, please, be conscious of it. Be conscious of the fact that a commitee working for a corporation somewhere decided what you get to know, and the fact that there has never, in all of history, been a single instance where allowing this kind of control has been positive.
Gerry Parchman
· 7 months ago
I wrote to Amazon.com as a customer and complained that I would stop buying their books and other products, and this is the reply I received back.
This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection.
It has been misreported that the issue was limited to Gay & Lesbian themed titles - in fact, it impacted 57,310 books in a number of broad categories such as Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine, and Erotica. This problem impacted books not just in the United States but globally. It affected not just sales rank but also had the effect of removing the books from Amazon's main product search.
Many books have now been fixed and we're in the process of fixing the remainder as quickly as possible, and we intend to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future.
Thanks for contacting us. We hope to see you again soon.
Please let us know if this e-mail resolved your question:
Karin
· 7 months ago
I have a character in a book I am writing that cross dresses, guess that means my light general literature book is now porn. Pretty judgmental and sad.
All Comments
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw_0_4?url=se...
But I have found that the terms "homosexual" and "homosexuality" tend to be ones used almost exclusively by the Christian Right, whereas progressives tend towards terms like "gay", "queer", etc.
So it doesn't surprise me that a search for "homosexuality" on Amazon returns those results.
It's just like the term "Darwinism" is used by creationists instead of "evolutionary theory" which is favored by the scientific community.
The use of one particular term over another has a lot to say about one's worldview and beliefs, and those would be reflected in titles of books and the search terms used for them on Amazon and other booksellers.
Thanks, John, for giving this a wider audience.
Religion increasingly losing court battles"
http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/art...
Frankly the days where anybody could say their bigotry was religiously inspired are in short number, and good riddance.
Based on what? I read that book when it came out. I don't recall anything in that dealt with gay themes, not that that would justify reclassifying it in the first place.
What, is Dorothy Allison gay? Is that what this is about?
That's insane.
Is "In Cold Blood" going to be subject to the same treatment?
What is Amazon thinking?
# Gay & Lesbian > Literature & Fiction > Fiction > Lesbian
Watch this get explained away when they backpedal as due to a technical error.
Publisher's Weekly:
"..., an Amazon spokesperson said that a glitch had occurred in its sales ranking feature that was in the process of being fixed. The spokesperson added that there was no new adult policy."
Riiiight.
http://markprobst.livejournal.com/15293.html
In all seriousness, a commenter at the LiveJournal metawriter community has made a guess I think may be correct. In a nutshell, Amazon is willing to "de-list" books which deal with adult themes, but they are too lazy or their programmers are too stupid to be consistent about it. As a result, terrible cultural prejudices are reflected -- even magnified -- in the outcome.
As a hetero computer geek who doesn't even read much fiction, I am freaking livid over this. If I wanted some ninny to provide me with a pre-Bowdlerized card catalog, I am sure there's a service that can do it. When I shop, I want to see what is available, dammit.
They can't be that stupid.
Search amazon front page on the term "homosexuality" & the first hit is “A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality ” (still ranked top of a list of books about how terrible & morally wrong being gay is). On the other hand, “GLBTQ: The Survival Guide for Queer and Questioning Teens" is completely invisible & unranked (as are similar books) unless you know exactly what you're looking for.
And John Barrowman's autobiography had its ranking stripped LOL.
What's next, throwing chicken bones around to divine the future or eating a cracker and saying it's a god?
This country is so hung up with voodoo christianity it can't function. I agree with your point on CNN when the country should be shitting itself with the economic crisis, the bailout and two wars we are worried if two people want to make a life committment and enjoy the same rights as everyone else.
Sad really.
I knew you could.
All right folks head on over to Powells.com for all your future book purchases...
http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2009/04/12/amaz...
What gay content does "The Diving Bell and the Butterly" have?
Doesn't that make it gay to most idiot Americans?
Seems like the bottom line and good customer service has always been his focus. He's had a huge brain fart on this one if it's true. And if it's true it won't stick for long.
Didn't he see Dobson waving the white flag? Who is Amazon trying to impress? If it's true.
I can hardly wait to tell him
Well, if they're gonna do it, let them do it in the light of day.
I'm with Shawn below. If we're "protecting" the sense and sensiblilities of people who can't think for themselves, then by all means
BAN THE FUCKING BIBLE!!
That's got to be one of the most horrible collections of fables and morality stories ever written.
If every one of Aesop's Fables wound up with the main character slaughtering entire tribes of peoples, being swallowed by the earth because they don't have the right beliefs, or being forced to murder their own children to prove that an imaginary diety is so much more important than the child of the sycophant, surely they would have pulled Aesop's off the shelves.
ESPECIALLY when every subsequent story contradicts every fable written before it!
But searches for other "provocative" items such as personal luibricant, personal vibrator - even gay men - bring up all sorts of things.
Searching for "Monette, Paul" brings up lots of book listings, none with any cover art until you get to the next level down of navigation.
Meanwhile, there are almost a quarter of a million books returned when searching for "divorce."
These books show up in general searches, as do Andrew Sullivan's books. But it's really weird that Amazon would suddenly come down with this ridiculous policy. They should not be in the business of classifying or censoring books based on content.
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA66510...
Uh..huh.
homosexuality and the bible
homosexuality and the politics of truth
homosexuality and christianity
homosexuality and American psychiatry
Very odd.....
"Find books, Bibles and more in our new Christian Books store."
Note the word "new." Did amazon somehow create a special priority for a "Christian Books" store? Might this explain why gays and lesbians have been demoted?
By the way, I've alway been driven to laughter in conventional bookstores by the section called "Religious Fiction." It just seems redundant to me. LOL
The best part is, I'm just about to start grad school and have about $1,500 of books to buy.
Will you finally wise up to the fact that Amazon is evil on many fronts? Many of us have tried to point this out to you in the past.
Will they delist the harry Potter series? Or did that moneymaking center escape the "glitch"?
Powell's. Yeah, it rocks.
>>>But the fact that Joseph Nicolosi and Linda Ames Nicolosi's A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality. is still ranked when Heather Has Two Mommies isn't, says it all. <<<
Amazon Bookstore in Minneapolis (lesbian owned) won a HUGE settlement against Amazon using THEIR copyrighted name, in the same business.
GOOD!
"The Joy of Sex" does not have sales figures. But the Victorian porn classic "My Secret Life" does. "Fanny Hill" does not. A few gay mysteries I've read lately do not. Something does not seem right, esp. when one straight porn classic has ratings and another does not. I am curious.
Amazon is now claiming this was a 'glitch...' but has not repaired the damage. Please keep on them.
Thanks again!
http://markprobst.livejournal.com/15293.html
Yeah... I think Amazon may have caught on that a lot of glbt people buy online for privacy and personal safety.
What changed lately? Running Press has a new gay romance line, and its first two books, Transgressions by Erastes and False Colors by Alex Beecroft, had made the crossover from 'gay romance' to 'historical romance' and even 'historical fiction.' They made it out of the ghetto... and there's a faction in the romance industry that wants to keep that genre defined as 'one man, one woman, no sex until after they've tied the knot.'
Happy ever after for gays is the Big Scary... We're not supposed to even want that, right?
I've been a romance writer for 15 years, with three major NY publishers. I'd be happy to see gay/lesbian romance included with mainstream romance ... unfortunately, the publishers have to bow to the pressure of the large percentage of 'straight' romance readers who live in the Bible Belt. One day, love will be love (between consenting adults), and there won't be any barriers in the publishing world.
Outrageous.
Was there some sort of news blackout regarding the Sandra Cantu case in California because it was Easter and the monster who has admitted to killing her, stuffing her in a suitcase and throwing her into a pond happened to be a Baptist Sunday School Teacher? I haven't seen anything about it today on cable news. There is this about her family holding Easter Services, and its just bizarre. The focus of their Easter Service just seems very strange:
http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_1212853...
I would think there would be even more focus on the victim, and less on the murderer, at their church? In fact, if it were me, I don't think I could bring myself to attend an "Easter Service" at that church.
I'm thinking if the murderer had turned out to be some man who was a drifter, instead of a "prim and proper Baptist Sunday School Teacher from a minister's family" then it would be more like Polly Klaas and 24/7 non-stop coverage!
So, there's some anecdotal evidence that there wasn't a total media blackout.
-S
FIRST you will issue an apology to OUR community
THEN you will get rid of this filthy ranking system.
What really might motivate Amazon to rescind their policy is the bad publicity that this and similar sites can generate towards them.
They also might listen to some of their own gay and lesbian employees. Any GLBT Amazon employees hang out on AmericaBlog?
-Sean
Amazon's loss is Barnes & Noble.com's gain.
http://www.shopobot.com/brokeback-mountain-pape...
There isn't a 8yo on the planet that doesn't know about gays/lesbians. If your brother is 16 and doesn't know, maybe his brainstem isn't as strong as yours.
"The book was predictably heterosexual....."
maybe that would get some attention.
JG.
This is wrong as i am a Male to Female Trans authoress who has no sex scenes in any of her work, other than intermated scenes
Anyone got a site containing the news story.
For example:
1. go to amazon.com
2. Search for Heather Has Two Mommies. (The field may even may offer to auto-complete the title for you.)
3. Whoa, there's no such book. Only another book discussing the controversy over this nonexistent book. And other books written by the same author that somehow is associated with the nonexistent book Heather Has Two Mommies.
4. Oh, but if one chooses "Books" from the search, then you will get around this non-ranked filter and voila!
The "story" broke on Twitter. You can follow this subject on this Twitter search results page:
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23amazonfail
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=#AmazonFail
Or link to books that have been excluded in this manner:
http://community.livejournal.com/meta_writer/11...
Very strange.
WHO complained is what I want to know, and who listened?
Better yet, shop at your local bookseller. If you still have one.
I am very disappointed in the unfair and discriminatory policies Amazon.com has employed against books with gay or lesbian content or characters.
Please close my account.
Does anyone know of a second person to whom Amazon told this? I expected to find in the comments on his blog another person who complained to them and got the same response. I'm not saying they didn't say this to other people. I'd just like to find a second source for this story. Thanks.
http://craigspoplife.blogspot.com/2009/04/is-am...
(& there are a couple of others, I'll see if I can locate links)
But A Boys Own Story does not.
Maupin's book Tales of the City has the ranking.
Mysterious Skin by Scott Heim has rankings for both the book and the movie.
Latter Days video has a Movies & TV ranking.
An Amazon boycott is going to hurt people like me more than it is Amazon.
Still, this is very strange -- and I don't buy the "glitch" answer. Glitches don't work that way.
OTOH, it could be some low level Christian freak in Amazon's programming department who decided to earn his Creds with Christ by sabotaging gay literature.
The idea that concepts, words, images, etc can affect human beings in a way so direct and impossible to mitigate on the part of the individual that they need to be restrained for ANY reason is absurd. It is baseless. It is false.
There has never been a single event in the history of the world that would have been made better by censorship, and there will never be such. There are countless events made worse by censorship, and will be countless more.
Corporate censorship holds our culture in its grip, and it is crushing us. The next generation has a new form of art - the videogame. The most heavily, stringently censored form of media ever conceived of. The platforms are controlled by corporations so very afraid of the idiocy of bored housewives that they have neutered the medium, and are working on cutting off its arms and legs as well.
Do not stand for this. Every time you see a black bar on TV, or hear a bleeped word, or hear of a company editing a film or a videogame, or see a videogame or movie rating, or see a "warning" about content, please, be conscious of it. Be conscious of the fact that a commitee working for a corporation somewhere decided what you get to know, and the fact that there has never, in all of history, been a single instance where allowing this kind of control has been positive.
their books and other products, and this is the reply I received back.
Gerry
(from Amazon.com customer relations)
Hello,
This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that
prides itself on offering complete selection.
It has been misreported that the issue was limited to Gay & Lesbian themed
titles - in fact, it impacted 57,310 books in a number of broad categories
such as Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine, and Erotica.
This problem impacted books not just in the United States but globally. It
affected not just sales rank but also had the effect of removing the books
from Amazon's main product search.
Many books have now been fixed and we're in the process of fixing the
remainder as quickly as possible, and we intend to implement new measures to
make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future.
Thanks for contacting us. We hope to see you again soon.
Please let us know if this e-mail resolved your question: