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Amazon Has a Gay Glitch

Amazon Has a Gay Glitch

The Twitterverse and blogsophere are abuzz about stripping hundreds of gay and lesbian books of their sales rankings because the books’ material has been deemed “adult.”

Titles like James Baldwin‘s “Giovanni’s Room” and Annie Proulx‘s “Brokeback Mountain” are among the book who have lost their ranking. Authors that have written about their own books losing their rankings include Mark R. Probst and Craig Seymour.

An Amazon spokesperson tells PublishersWeekly said that “a glitch had occurred in its sales ranking feature that [is] in the process of being fixed. The spokesperson added that there was no new adult policy.”

You can follow and contribute to the growing backlash about this controversy on Twitter with the hash tag #amazonfail.

Also up for debate: Entering homosexuality into Amazon will give you search results full of “healing” books including the first search result — a paperback called “A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality.”

FYI: A full list of books that had their sales ranks removed can be found here.

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39 Responses to “Amazon Has a Gay Glitch”

Pages: [1] 2 » Show All

  1. 1
    maichan Says:

    Proud of you for covering this.

  2. 2
    T Says:

    So terrible of all the places to discriminate……. peoples works are many authors livelihoods

  3. 3
    MariKurisato Says:

    Good coverage wrap up, and nice artwork! ^_^

  4. 4
    rii Says:

    yah i read this somewhere too. they still have playboy on the rankings and works with explicit heterosexual romance but books on the history of the lgbt community or on gay romance, but no sex are being stripped of their ranking.

    stupid world we live in.

  5. 5
    Megan fox rocks Says:

    so …..

  6. 6
    Amanda Says:


  7. 7
    Bunny Says:

    This is just silly. Censorship sucks!

  8. 8
    popeye Says:

    Who cares; homos are always offended about some slight or another. They should all go back in the closet and shut up

  9. 9
    nyx Says:

    oh popeye go eat some spinach!

  10. 10
    Razorback Says:

    Oooooo. They have just pissed off the wrong community. I’m sure their is a HUGE percentage of Gay and Lesbian community that order books from Amazon. Bad move on their part. I can already see a HUGE percentage of lose of sales on that site. Discrimination of any sort should not be tolerated .

  11. 11
    Jaye Says:

    Sooooooo? Who ever uses the ranking to determine if they want to buy a book in the first place? I hope Gays aren’t becoming like PETA. PETA was respected years ago, but they complained about so much petty stuff that a lot o people stopped taking them seriously and thinks of them as a bunch of nuts.

    People need to learn to fight battles that matter.

  12. 12
    rii Says:

    yah cuz discrimination is totally something “slight.” how much of a ignorant bigot are you popeye? why is it that i am a 17 year old heterosexual girl and im offended by this then? some people in this world actually want and like equality…

  13. 13
    john Says:

    And we should care why? They have not pulled the books from the website. Stop bitching and go on.

  14. 14
    Carrie Says:

    Please sign the protest petition:

  15. 15
    Yo Mama Says:

    People who call other people bigots are bigots themselves.

  16. 16
    Halli Says:

    Amazon is just trying to cover their assess now that they’ve been caught.

    I hate your wight-loss ads Jared! That’s nasty!

  17. 17
    Worried soul Says:

    Amazon needs to know that stupidity like this will hurt them badly . moreover , who are they to decide what anybody wants ? To hell with them !!

    I am a heterosexual and am definitely not proud of discrimination like this anywhere by anyone !!

  18. 18
    jt Says:

    people need to lighten up. amazon can do whatever the *** it wants and in all likelihood what they want is to sell as much stuff as possible. I really doubt they were censoring – they even said there was a glitch.

  19. 19
    gerard Vandenberg Says:

    the word “LESBIAN” has indeed some magic in it.

  20. 20
    geraldine Says:

    1) about time someone reacts in this society – i find it repulsive the degree of liberty (and vulgarity) our societies have attained, you see both gay and straight couples making out in public and that’s simply disrespectual to pedestrians, 2) you’re not born homesexual, you breed homesexuality so yes it can be healed as kindly suggested by amazon. in most societies, parents wish to see their sons marry a woman so, hey, if they can prevent their sons from marrying somebody else’s son then WHY NOT? what’s the hitch (or glitch)?, 3) amazon is not forcing you to buy the book it’s just suggesting it, 4) like someone above said, amazon can do whatever it feels like doing as long as it doesn’t PHYSICALLY (or mentally as a matter of fact) harm society, amazon did NOT in any way hold the gay population responsible for the reduced number of books, 5) yes broke back mountain is rather inappropriate and should NOT be sold ever so publicly – i mean, kids shop at so it’s only normal amazon dubs it as “adult material”, 6) homosexuals are becoming a bit too sensitive for my taste, why do you always feel targeted? (and as a result, blow everYthing out of proportion…?)

    i honestly can go on forever…but the above are a few of my arguments

    enjoy :)

  21. 21
    laFiga Says:

    Great coverage! There’s word out thi smight be a) a giant troll; b)fundies tweaking the system Some of the books cenosred are getting tagged with amazonfail along with positive tags like “great book” and then there’s this

  22. 22
    beck. Says:

    geraldine, your first arguments are completely irrelevant. i am a twenty year old female heterosexual, and i find the discrimination that people such as yourself embody disgusting. the point of the amazon “glitch” is not that the books are not available (which, they are) but its a matter of principle. why should such books like playboy still have ratings when literary works that suggest homosexual relations be stripped of them? its completely discriminatory and wrong. as for saying homosexuals as being “a bit too sensitive”, i think you need to take into consideration what a generalization that is.

    thank you for covering this story, jared.

  23. 23
    anon Says:

    WHY do you post this here???? I thought this site was about celebrities. Geez…..

  24. 24
    gay is OK! Says:

    “WHY do you post this here????”
    Jared is gay and uses his own site to promote gay issues – like it should be!

  25. 25
    Katie Says:

    I’m sure Borders will be glad of the increased business from the large disposable income of the LGBT community. Amazon is fail.

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