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Amazon Deems LGBT Books Too ‘Adult’ For Search, Best Seller Lists.
Indeed, the previously Young Adult book “Heather Has Two Mommies” was deemed too “Adult”, while a Playboy Centerfolds book is mild enough to remain unchanged.
As of yesterday, April 12th, 2009, six of the top ten search results for the term “homosexuality” were the following:
1 ) A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality
3 ) 101 Frequently Asked Questions About Homosexuality (“Is change possible for a homosexual”)
4 ) What the Bible Really Says About Homosexuality
6 ) When Homosexuality Hits Home: What to Do When a Loved One Says They’re Gay (“How to answer common pro-homosexual arguments”)
8 ) Can Homosexuality Be Healed?
9 ) Coming Out of Homosexuality: New Freedom for Men & Women (“preparing you for heterosexual romance and marriage”)
Now for a tangent: as noted in an article off the Gawker website,
On the other hand, Amazon must be happy, on some level, to have finally expanded its customer base beyond the sophisticated techno elites, straight through into the American cultural backwaters where this sort of material is remotely offensive, somehow.
Wait, really? I’m 90% sure this is sarcasm, since Amazon is a giant conglomerate hardly needing a boost in customer base.
Back to topic: There have been several “leaks” in the Amazonian quest for anti-gayifying the search results. You can find them all over message boards and forums. Earthly Joys by Philippa Gregory, which features a gay sex scene, made (or missed?) the preliminary cuts.
Ones negatively affected also include Young Adult books, such as Harvey Milk biographies.
While one of the first responses was the following:
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
Later, Amazon recanted and blamed the incident on a “glitch”:
“There was a glitch in our systems and it’s being fixed,” Amazon’s director of corporate communications, Patty Smith, said in an e-mail to the Associated Press Sunday.
We’ll see what changes will be made to fix this problem.
