We the undersigned, state our strong objection to Amazon’s “Adult” policy as outlined in their letter in italics below“In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude “adult” material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.
Hence, if you have further questions, kindly write back to us.
Best regards,
Ashlyn D
Member Services
Amazon.com Advantage
We find it hypocritical that Amazon continues to sell adult books but thinks that removing the sales rating to (keep them out of the public eye) will achieve this.
We would like to hear the rationalisation for allowing sales ratings for explicit books with a heterosexual focus such as:
—Playboy: The Complete Centerfolds by Chronicle Books (pictures of over 600 naked women)
—Rosemary Rogers’ Sweet Savage Love” (explicit heterosexual romance);
—Kathleen Woodiwiss’ The Wolf and the Dove (explicit heterosexual romance);
—Bertrice Smal’s Skye o’Malley which are all explicit heterosexual romances
—and Alan Moore’s Lost Girls (which is a very explicit sexual graphic novel)
Yet the following books, which have a gay or lesbian focus, have been classed as “adult books” and stripped of their sales ratings:
—Radclyffe Hill’s classic novel about lesbians in Victorian times, The Well of Loneliness, and which contains not one sentence of sexual description;
—Mark R Probst’s YA novel The Filly about a young man in the wild West discovering that he’s gay (gay romance, no sex);
—Charlie Cochrane’s Lessons in Love (gay romance with no sex);
—The Dictionary of Homophobia: A Global History of Gay & Lesbian Experience, edited by Louis-George Tin (non-fiction, history and social issues);
—and Homophobia: A History by Bryan Fone (non-fiction, focus on history and the forms prejudice against homosexuality has taken over the years).
Please tell us, Amazon, why the explicit books with a heterosexual focus are allowed to keep their sales ratings while the non-explicit romances, the histories and the biographies that deal with LGBTQ issues are not.
We would love to hear your reasoning.
Here's the petition if you want to sign it.
Now... I'm not a person who buys gay books... Because in general, I'm apathetic (I'm pro-gay rights, but when it comes to actually buy things and stuff, I don't, because I don't really care for them.. If you want to get married, get married. Law shouldn't prohibit that. If you want to adopt, then adopt. If you want to sell books, then no one should be limiting audience), but I don't believe in censoring.
Sure, if it's explicit, then we don't want kids seeing. And I'm sure there were some "explicit" things. However, I think there are far more "explicit" heterosexual books that should have been taken care of earlier. Then maybe so many people wouldn't have gotten pissed off...
My friends are actually pretty irritating:
Him:
i dont see whats wrong with that....its not like theyre saying they support the book...and they cant stop carrying the book just because some people dont agree with it.
My reply:
it's offensive.
think of searching "Christianity" on Amazon, and then the first thing that pops up is, "How to cure crazy Christian zealots- tips on how to establish that it's bullshit."
You wouldn't be offended?
If not, good for you.
Another person: why is it their book that they're selling? if not its probably not their fault, well just because they let ppl sell those kinda books it doesn't mean they hate gay ppl. that'd be like saying america loves white supremacy because the constitution protects and allows KKK to march and assemble on public property.
My response:
no- see. read this:
http://markprobst.livejournal.com/15293.html
http://tehdely.livejournal.com/88823.html
they just happened to remove all books that had homosexual content (like support) from the search for "homosexuality."
also, I highly doubt that being gay is anything close AT ALL to being homosexual.
So apparently they are under the impression that things like this happen because it's selling like WOAH.
What's actually happened is that they took off everything that's been selling and bumped up those things that want to "prevent" or "treat" homosexuality, and what place it doesn't have has in Christianity.
Is it all that surprising that there are quite a few places that are flaming up about this? I don't think so.