After first reading about (and getting pissed off about) this whole deal on Slog earlier, I had just read about it being a "glitch" on MSN UK and was going to check and see if Slog had any updates about it. It sucks that all of this happened; but, whatever the initial reason, I'm happy they are taking steps to "correct the problem."

What will we do
until Dan gets back?!?
Who will tell us
what to think?!?

Wild guess: Some group of "concerned parents" complained about books promoting the "gay agenda," Amazon quietly caved to their concerns in the least labor-intensive way possible (probably ordering some employees to flag all these books in their database so they wouldn't show up in the sales rankings) and hoped the problem would go away. Now some gay people have noticed, so Amazon will look for another easy solution (like flagging the anti-gay books as well) so they can go on about their business of selling books (and vibrators and dildos and pornography) while avoiding controversy.

Spineless e-books!

How dare he go to Hawaii when there's a gay crisis going on!

High tech "book burning"? Please. Lets call this what it really is. A high-tech HOLOCAUST. It is the Shoah by electronic means. I mean THE Shoah. The Shoah itself. It is the shoah -- the Shoah is still happening today. What began with kristallnacht on November 9, 1933 never really ended -- Amazon has shown that the holocaust -- THE actual holocaust (itself) -- is continuing right now. Now. It's happening before our eyes on a web site that sells books (and stuff) called www.amazon.com

Dan Savage you're a sycophant and a coward and frankly a collaborator for calling the HOLOCAUST ITSELF nothing more than a "book burning." You disgust me. Although I am still intrigued by your idea for not letting teenagers drive cars. Can we meet to talk on that?

Amazon search suggestions go dead if you type the word gay or lesbian as the first search term. In contrast, type the word Christian and watch topic suggestions spring up starting with the first letter of the second you you start typing.

Amazon has blacklisted search suggestions that include the terms gay and lesbian.

Following up to #6, type "gay marriage" in the Amazon search field. Compare what happens when you type "Christian marriage".

Have fun.

Well said. In addition to the obvious homophobia, I'm really concerned about the issues this snafu raises about digital censorship: http://urbzen.com/2009/04/12/making-book…

It's tough to believe that it could be a glitch, especially with the email reply to Mark Probst a few days earlier.

The only believable glitch theory that I've heard is that a hate group marked a whole bunch of gay content on Amazon as objectionable and Amazon's automated system started pulling them down after enough complaints. However, since I can't seem to find a link to report objectionable products, I have trouble believing this theory too.

6,7
Have you just figured out that everyone loves Christians; gays not so much?

Thanks for taking care of this Anthony. I know you would have reverted to smoke signals if necessary.

Now that Cardinal Savage has chimed in, we may now all comment accordingly.

Hey, Amazon, I just thought you'd like to know, I just bought $75 worth of books today... from Powell's.

Powell's is awesome, everyone.

www.Powells.com

Here is an Amazon link to bunch of gay themed childrens literature with sales ranking still intact: http://www.amazon.com/Different-Dragon-J…

---so the delisting of gay themes isn't entire. Looking at the breadth of what is included though makes you wonder why these books escaped. Something about the key words not found in them, I suppose, though they are certainly gay themed.

Are there any librarian catalog and/or subject classification specialists out there with an understanding of book search criteria who can make sense out of just what the Amazon search engine is up to?

Some people think that the anti-gay groups were flagging the books as "adult" over and over again and that Amazon's software automatically drops the books from the rankings if they get enough flags from customers.

http://tehdely.livejournal.com/88823.htm…

Books like Virginia Woolf's Orlando have been delisted -- a book with NO gay characters and NO sex -- but we all know Virginia was "that way" and what the book is "really" about. Anais Nin's books are delisted; Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer (complete with a naked woman on the cover of the paperback edition) is NOT. This blatant discrimination is so clear!

is this really just related to gay-themed content? the reason i ask is because i was checking the sales ranks for some books a couple days ago, before i heard about this whole controversy, and i noticed that sales ranks showed up for all but the 3 that were sex-related (and none of these were gay-related)

check, for example, the page for
"Female Circumcision in Africa: Culture, Controversy, and Change (Directions in Applied Anthropology: Adaptations & Innovations)"

http://www.amazon.com/Female-Circumcisio…

"there's no way in hell this is a glitch"

It's certainly not a computer glitch, but rather a glitch somewhere in the decision making process, and/or a result of their metadata not being sufficiently fine-grained to distinguish between "homosexual" and "homoerotic".

I hope they will fix it. Amazon isn't evil.

i'm not sure i follow the logic of all the commenters who seem to be hung up on dan savage rather than the controversy at hand. get a grip people. in any event, i won't be buying anything from amazon until they fix this 'glitch', apologize, and explain. it seems to me that it is virtually impossible to have such a narrow and nuanced glitch occur.

#glitchmyass and #amazonfail to twitter if you think this is pathetic. Amazon, shame on you. Get with it and step out of the 1950's. We don't have separate drinking fountains for people of color, and homosexuality isn't a disease. Top search when you input "homosexuality" is "a parent's guide to preventing homosexuality".. ?/

GLITCH MY ASS. poster 17, not even that rationalization explains this one. It is deliberate, and it needs to be protested. Run them all the way out of business. I want a formal apology and a head on a plate, not some lame excuse about glitches.

This is going to be quite a roller-coaster ride, people.

I predict by Wednesday night somebody at Amazon will be issuing this giant gushing apology and all the right-wing forums will be ranting madly about the gay mafia.

Add the dramatic element of Dan Savage being marooned in a remote location, desperately trying to get back.

Which staff member will step up and save the day?
The computer geek? The theatre boy? The art lady?

Will some other source break this story before the Stranger?

Will the "glitch" just magically disappear with no explanation?

Is this "glitch" the opening volley in a larger battle?

Is this the final apocalyptic end-of-days battle between the holy and the sodomists?

I plan to record Heroes tomorrow night, just in case.

@5:

Brilliant! I wish that people who draw book-burning comparisons could go back in time and see that they have NO FUCKING IDEA WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT.

The only person whose head should be on a plate is the one who issued the original statement concerning adult materials. There are plenty of technical reasons this could be a glitch.

Microsoft bans names in XBox live containing the word gay. How many of you self-absorbed asshats are running Windows and Office?

All the more reason to buy books from local, independent vendors. Most of them proudly promote gay-themed material.

confidential to Dan - Should have bought a PC!

LOL I think Amazon is trying to correct the problem right now if the above comment about entering "gay marriage" in the search box is to believed.

I *just* entered that term, and the book that came up was

Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America by Jonathan Rauch

Nothing went dead in the search.

Note: I chose "Books" as the category. I'm wondering if the gay search is a problem if you just let the default "Amazon.com" remain the category.

OK, having more fun with this, I entered just "gay" in the search engine. The first result was some novel called "Strings Attached" followed by a little panel directing you to Gay & Lesbian Erotica among many other categories.. then many other titles that were, well, very gay.

So I went back and entered "Christian", and THIS was my first result:

* 12 "Christian" Beliefs That Can Drive You Crazy by Henry Cloud and John Townsend

The following was an analogous panel directing you to different types of Christian categories.

The THIRD result was this:

* Becoming A Contagious Christian by Bill Hybels and Mark Mittelberg

A "contagious" Christian?

WSTDWJH?

Skipping down a little to Result #6:

* Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense by N.T. Wright

Nothing surprising.

But then the big payload. Result #7. Oh yes, #7:

* Good Christian Bitches by Kim Gatlin

I did not make this latter one up.

...

In brief: either YMMV widely, or Amazon completely reversed the glitch in light of this thread. I really hope it's the latter, because this is really fucking funny!

Anthony --

Could you make sure to check in with Dan again on Monday, cuz even Andrew Sullivan seems to be open to the idea that it was kind of error and not a purposeful change in policy.

Until Dan gives us permission otherwise, we'll all continue to be outraged.

Thanks!

Anthony --

Could you make sure to check in with Dan again on Monday, cuz I just took a shit but I'm reluctant to wipe my shitty ass until Dan gives me permission, otherwise I'll just muck around with a shitty ass.

Thanks!

I don't care if it's a glitch or not. I dislike Amazon, and conversely I totally adore Powell's. So all my books come from Powell's anyway.

Honestly, Amazon's interface is so annoying/cloying and their pages so ugly I don't understand why anyone buys anything there, ever.

29
You're right about the interface. Half the time I give up and go get it on eBay.

This is not a "gay crisis" -- it is a censorship issue that (apparently) targets books with gay content. If Amazon had "disappeared" books about Islam or Mormonism or evolution or renewable energy or writing poetry, it would still be a crisis. While it is especially disturbing that this may have been triggered by the current hate-mongering against a population whose fundamental civil liberties are under debate, it is naive to think that this only affects gay people (or readers of gay literature). This bell tolls for all of us.

Wow-- the don't support the arts at all and they make it hard to find the gay books? Is there a connection?

This is an easy one. What did you expect? Amazon is yuppie Wal Mart. Support local book sellers.

Stop the anti-gay discrimination. Sign the petition.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/petition/…

I'm new to Gay Glitch, can anyone recommend a few albums as an introduction to the genre?

"High tech book burning"? Give me a break you drama queen... IF it's not a glitch of some sort then it sucks and it's wrong, but hyperbole of that sort just makes you sound like the gay Glenn Beck.

Like I shop at Amazon... funny.

Dan's own books are getting the same uneven treatment being observed elsewhere.

With their rank removed we have "The Kid" and "The Committment", because nothing attacks the foundation of civilization like discussing marriage and and becoming a parent. "Savage Love: Straight Answers..." has it's rank removed but "Skipping Towards Gomorrah" has retained it's ranking. A collection of coming out stories, "Out of the Ordinary" for which Dan wrote the introduction, has also had it's rank removed.

That any titles are having their Amazon rank removed isn't a glitch, it's purposeful, but the set of titles having their rank removed (perhaps by an arbitrary classification or tag) could be subject to plenty of human and other types of error.

Never ascribe to malice that which may be more easily explained by human stupidity.

Petitions are stupid.

and malicious

Another argument for buying from independent book stores. Even if you live in a place that doesn't have a good book shop, there are plenty of independent book shops online that can get you what you need. So you can still shop in your pajamas at three am. More money for the bookseller, the author and the community.

@22

If your point was that sometimes trying to do the right thing for the majority has unintended or unavoidable consequences for a minority, I agree.

After all, more than 95% of the usage of "gay" on XBox live is pejorative and we know that Microsoft has been engaged with GLAAD for some time trying to find way to balance protecting everyone from harassment with allowing a minority to express their identity.

I'm interested in hearing what Amazon has to say and until we do, I'm keeping my powder dry.

This is a typical gay hissy fit hysterical 'the world is against us' and 'no one and nothing are ever good enough to make the gays happy' blowup that happens on slog every couple of days.
No wonder nobody likes you.

I suddenly seem to have a glitch preventing me from buying stuff there right now...

@ 16, the original thing that came out said it was to get rid of things with adult content's sales ranks. One of the biggest issues is that somehow, most things with any LGBT theme, including children's books that are praised for being age appropriate, are considered adult content. And, ya know, they managed to leave some porn ranked, because porn isn't adult content.

@ 43 This isn't a gay hissy fit. Having the sales rank removed on amazon means that the books don't show up in searches very easily and on other lists that they have. It is not appropriate to call most things with any sort of LGBT theme or content adult content, when there are things like porn on amazon without their ratings removed, and similar books with straight characters that aren't removed. Most of the books/other things that have been deranked deal with either LGBT issues (many in a very educational sense) or transgressive heterosexuality, both of which are not approved of by the conservative "pro-family" people in our country.

I feel like its not a glitch. And amazon just flipped under all the negative feedback they were getting. Or, maybe they are un-ranking adult content books, and the glitch was that LGBT themed stuff was included in that - someone thought it fit, and it wasn't well checked over, something of the like. But, I doubt it. And, I feel like its ridiculous that amazon would cave into people saying adult content things have to be deranked, because honestly, if you're worried about what your kids see on the internet, amazon really isn't the worst of it, and you really out to be supervising your children on the internet if you're that worried. Why would kids honestly be on amazon by themselves anyways, when they can't buy anything themselves, and if they're old enough to have their own credit card, they've probably ya know, watched porn on your computer already, and just aren't telling you that.

@43 you aren't paranoid if they really are out to get you

"there's no way in hell this is a glitch"

I'm a blogger for an alternative newspaper but obviously I know more about amazon's software than people who make a living at it.

47
Hey!
I can turn italics on.
And sometimes back off, also.

"there's no way in hell this is a glitch."

I disagree, however what caused the glitch can only be that much worse. Was some kind of tag altered by employees where as amazon is tagging their books to be gay? Did a supervisor order someone to delete books with a certain reference in them and thought no one would notice?

No one is forcing you to buy from Amazon, they have plenty of competition. If they don't want gay $$ we just have to show them they won't just lose out on gay $$, you have plenty of strait allies ready and willing to pay extra at other sites and leave amazon in the dust.

Oddly, searching for "heather has two mommies" turns up The Different Dragon as the first result in the US and Heather Has Two Mommies in the UK. The actual book doesn't come up until 12 as a pre-order with no image.

The more I think about it, the more unlikely I think that Amazon-the-corporate-entity did this on purpose. Bezos is nothing if not a canny businessman, and this would obviously be a terrible business decision. I wouldn't use a canned response from a customer service rep as evidence of *anything* - I've had shipping issues and gotten several responses from them that showed they didn't understand what was going on at all, but were very willing to respond anyway.

It makes more sense to me that this would be the result of an employee/hate group taking advantage of a vulnerability in the system.

@51 is OTM. If there's anything right wingers are good at doing since the beginning of the year is loitering the feedback/comments section of every web site imaginable, and I wouldn't be surprised if they organized to do something that's so desperate for attention than this.

I have boycotted Amazon. com ever since they poured money into right wing campaigns. This latest show of their true colors increases my disgust with them. Boycott!

After hearing from people on the inside at Amazon, I am convinced it was in fact, a "glitch."

Well, more like user error--some idiot editing code for one of the many international versions of Amazon mixed up the difference between "adult" and "erotic" and "sexuality". All the sites are tied together, so editing one affected all for blacklisting, and ta-da, you get this situation.

The CS rep who responded that this was Amazon policy was just confused about what they were talking about, and gave standard boilerplate about porn.

The dumbest part is saying it was a "glitch". A "glitch"? Just say that it was one of your workers making an editing error. Really dumb PR move, that one.

Let me know if you actually want more details on how it went down, but it's pretty boring and technical.

md

Not sure how it's a "glitch" given that it's been going on for months before it received this degree of publicity. Unless Amazon's staffed by some very unobservant people. I suppose it's a toss-up between "morons" and "homophobes".

It's entirely possible that other incidents/editings are due to other policies--I can only tell you what caused the mass delisting over the weekend.

http://community.livejournal.com/brutal_… claims responsibility

http://bryant.livejournal.com/672165.htm… claims bullshit on the responsibility claimer

You're an idiot if you think your computer experience entitles you to say this wasn't a glitch. I can think of a dozen ways this could be a glitch, and I didn't work there. If I did, I could think of a hundred.

http://blog.seattlepi.com/amazon/archive…

@59: Name one that doesn't have something to do with LGBT issues unfairly being conflated with "adult" topics or "sex."

I wish we had used the term "homoaffectionate." It would be more accurate and focus on feelings instead of sex acts.

OH SO NOW SAVAGE IS PISSED OFF WELL WELCOME TO THE CLUB I GUESS WHEN YOU CANT GET YOUR PORN DELIVERED DIRECTLY TO YOUR HOSE AT VASHON OR YOUR STOOL AT RPLACE THEN ITS REALLY OPPRESSION HUH NOT LIKE WHAT SELF-ACTUALIZED QUEERS AND DYKES OF SIZE FACE EVERY DAY WERE ALL UNDER THE OBAMA BUS NOW SAVAGE HOW DOES IT FEEL NOT GOOD HUH

what if everyone started tagging neocon and talibangelist works as gay ... hmmm ... wonder what would happen ...

"As someone with a bit of computer expertise, let me just say, there's no way in hell this is a glitch."

Um. I think you are someone who works at The Stranger with a bit of computer expertise compared to other people who work at The Stranger. Someone who truly has a bit of computer expertise would understand that doing what Amazon does is hard.

For all you claiming to know the computer algorhythms behind it all, I challenge your preconceptions. The Amazon classification scheme is not contained in-house, nor is it even machine or policy-based. It is farmed out on an item-by-item basis to workers who accept a small amount per transaction. So you get stay-at-home moms or other folks classifying books according to their own belief systems.

In this case, as we all know, there is a large segment of the population that is uninformed and has knee-jerk reactions to anything that suggests "gay". So you can imagine how they will classify the autobiography of an openly gay man (John Barrowman). Without even reading it, they'll assume there are chapters devoted to...well, all things gay.

Amazon's gaffe was not exercising enough control over those contract workers, is all. It is one of the most gay-friendly employers I've ever known, and I'm sorry that this happened but it was not something Amazon did intentionally.

Second to last paragraph: it's = it is. You mean "its" = belonging to it.
For the love of God, use your 3rd grade grammar.

Who cares! As long as I have my gay porn & hook ups I'm a gay happy camper!

Phil DeBong