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petition at this link-
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/in-prot…
Powell's is also local and will be my online bookstore from now on. They certainly need my money more than Amazon.
Is it appropriate to start a sentence with "hence?"
But having nothing on hostage rescue ??
V. odd indeed. Reinforces worst stereotypes of ultrahipsters as out of touch, not too interested in America, shrinking from violence with distate, etc.
Here's the funny thing -- this is a big win for Obama's patient, smart, targeted, limited use of force .... conjoined with criminal law enforcement ....everything we want the new administration to stand for and to teach the other Murkins how smart foreign policy can work.
So not even props to the big O --?? V. Weird indeed.
a further tidbit. Just skip over if this stuff bores you btw....
from the Washington Post -- "On Saturday, residents of the Somali town of Harardhare, known as a pirate haven, reported that U.S. military helicopters were buzzing overhead. A town elder, Salad Aden, said that one landed in the town and stayed for 10 minutes. Aden said a chopper was back overhead Sunday morning."
Those incursions would be clearly agin' international law. Unless justified as part of self defense, a show of force towards someone with connections to these pirates......
The pirate issue now lays open for Obama to create multilateral solution with various navies creating corridor, sharing costs, using targeted force against land bases/havens, and using int'l criminal law tools to take down finance and communications networks, virtually teach the world how fighting terrorism can be done in a smart way, etc. Why, this can be the mini war he wins, he can come out looking very, very good. And those incursions that have already happened clearly show there's going to be something he does using force.
Happy Easter.
Blogger, Vox and Tumblr are free and easy to use. I guess what I'm saying is, get your own fucking blog if you care so much.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url…
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url…
Try again.
---
I read online today that Amazon has stopped ranking gay themed titles. This is having the effect, intended or not, of pushing a whole genre of publishing off your lists, and into the closet. Even the children's book "Heather Has Two Mommies" has been de-ranked and thereby de-listed. Or, put another way, closeted. Only Kindle editions are listed now when you search Gay and Lesbian bestsellers, because the print editions have had their rankings stripped.
What were you thinking when you did this? As a gay man, and a frequent customer here, I am more unhappy to read about this then I can express. It's one thing to keep sexually graphic content out of sight of minors, but another thing entirely to push anything having to do with the lives of gay people into the closet. That, simply put, is bigotry. A kind of bigotry I thought Amazon wasn't really interested in trading in.
And here I was, just about to purchase another lawn and garden tool...something I need and can't seem to find locally. Like the lawn mower blade I bought some time ago. Oh...and all the mp3s I've been buying lately...I have some more titles I was going to search for. Hardly a week goes by that I don't buy a song, or a book, or some other product, from Amazon. But not now. You need to seriously re-think this policy, and quickly, or I will not be buying a single thing more from Amazon. And considering the stink I'm seeing about this online already...I doubt I'll be the only customer you loose over this. Get a little more common sense into your ranking policy, and the prejudice out of it. My thanks in advance.
I won't be buying from amazon any longer, or directing readers to buy my books there.
Hannah
Also, people really need to just start ignoring loveschild, as that will probably be more effective at getting him/her/hir to be less obnoxious, if only in that him/her/hir will stop responding back multiple times in a post and inciting people further.
? There's more than one lesbian pregnancy book?
Amazon customer service email: ecr@amazon.com; customer service phone number: 1-800-201-7575 or 206-266-2992
http://www.amazon.com/Naughty-Girls-Rock…
http://www.amazon.com/Sizzlin-Latinas-2-…
http://www.amazon.com/Girls-Gone-Wild/dp…
http://www.amazon.com/Lie-Me-Lauren-Lee-…
(some of which include things in the product description things like... "extremely sexually explicit" and, its not adult content, unlike Heather has two Mommies)
Check out this list made so far (and growing) of the enormous number of books effected.
http://community.livejournal.com/meta_wr…
Aside to Sam: I was unaware a bias could have a sexual orientation.
I believe you mean an "anti-gay" or "anti-homosexual" bias.
Seems like someone at Amazon must have had a homosexual panic moment...
Romans 1:26-27
26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:
27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
Okay. First, lets go back 2,000 years. Paul is writing this letter to Rome, after his missionary tour ot the Mediterranean. On his journey, Paul had seen great temples built to honor fertility gods and godesses of sex and passion like Aphrodite, Diana, etc, instead of the one true God. Some of those priests and priestesses were said to engage in odd sexual behaviors (castrating themselves, drunken sexul orgies, having sex with young temple prostitutes of both genders) to honor the Gods.
The bible shows clearly that sexuality is a gift from God, and God celebrates passion, but he emphasizes that when passion controls our lives, that's a bad thing.
Living for pleasure means that we're forgetting that we're God's children, and we may end up serving false gods of sex and passion, just as the priests and priestesses in Paul's time. Its saying that with an obsession of pleasure, we may end up walking away from the God that created us, which causes God to abandon the dreams he had for our lives.
Its most probable that the priests and priestesses were not in these behaviors because they were gay or lesbian either, so God didn't abandon them because they were practicing homosexuality, but because they were worshiping other Gods. It is not the homosexuality that God is condemning, it is the worshiping of the other gods and the practices of passion that consume all aspects of the life.
Also note, that Romans 2 begins with "Therefore, [referring to Romans 1], you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself..." Even after Paul described the disturbing practices he has seen, he warns us that it is God who judges others, not us.
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/…
Happy Easter.
What? You do know that these books are already legally available, right?
And I call bullshit on you, Loveschild. This policy isn't about "protecting fragile minds." Please. I love how conservatives always hide behind "protecting children." This policy and others like it are for squeamish adults. Unless your kid has your credit card, they can't order the damn book anyway, and they can't even read more than 2 pages in their excerpts. So again. This isn't about protecting children; it's about promoting the feelings of ADULTS.
Adults who are too scared that their kids are gonna (gasp) ASK QUESTIONS. Isn't that what kids do? Ask questions? "How am I going to tell them that Heather has two mommies?" you ask. You're going to tell them that there are gay people in the world and some of them have families. Why, Loveschild? Because they *exist.* Whether or not you agree with homosexuality, whether or not you think it's sinful and an abomination, doesn't change the fact that there are gay people in this world. Just like there are people of different races, different cultures, and different religions (different religions, by the way, are also an abomination to the Christian Lord). You can tell your child that you believe it's wrong. You can even tell your child that all gay people are full of rainbows and candy. I don't really care cuz it’s your kid. But sheltering your child (and yourself, while we're at it) from reality does not change the reality.
As for your “emphasis on the sexual” part of your comment, ALL non-platonic relationships are sexual, not just homosexual ones, sweetie. I doubt our parents initially got together to play a weekly night of bridge and NEVER had any desire to see each other naked. With your own logic, you couldn’t explain to kids why Heather would have a mother and a father, because in order for poor old Heather to have appeared, the mother and the father would have had SEX.
Sorry, Lovechild. Use better logic next time.
It's my most sincere wish that the joy brought about the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ reigned completely this day at your house.
This is already emerging as a topic in Amazon "Customer Discussions" related to gay-themed books that have been deranked. I started a new discussion under Radcliffe Hall's Well of Loneliness (Well of Loneliness?! I mean, really. What are they thinking?!), but it would probably be better to move this out of the gay lit ghetto into the mainstream. Maybe flooding Amazon's bestseller discussions with news about this ridiculous policy will get someone's attention ...
We are happy for you that you can find that the Bible does not condemn homosexuality. However we object to you forcing your religious views on the rest of us and trying to have your religious view of marriage stamped into civil law.
Great new (and I mean it, most sincerly) your reading your Bible. Bad new your pulling scripture out of context, even as it is written in English.
Please read post 42, excellent context. Now, you have taken those verses out of the begining of Paul's letter to Romans. Why was Paul writing Romans? Two reasons: 1) To encourage the newly growing church. 2) Because there was bickering and fighting amongst the Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians. The big issues of the day was circumcision and eating food from temple sacrifices. The Roman Christians were at odds with each other. Paul's letter opens rhetorically, he is poking fun at both groups while pointing out both of their faults in a very serious manner. Paul is not talking about homosexuality in this passage, he is refering to pagan worship which involved sex (again see post 42). We know this for two reasons: 1)There is no word for homosexual in ancient Greek or Hebrew, the word is of English origin and first appeared in the Bible in 1946. 2) The Greek's had muliple words for the word natural (the same is true for many of their words), the word natural being used there is (physin) and the word unnatural is (paraphysin), those are the same two words used in Romans 11. In Romans 11, Paul writes that God grafts the Gentile Christians onto the olive tree. He grafts us to the Jewish Christians, the wild olive trees. Paul chose the word (paraphysin) to refer to you and I, and the word (physin) to refer to the Jewish people. We the unnatural (paraphysin) were grafted to the natural (physin)to become co- heirs of salvation. This takes us back to the verses you quoted, Romans 1: 26, 27. I hope this helps you understand that Paul was not condemning loving same-sex relationships, he was pointing out to the Roman/Gentile Christians that they too once uses to worship in the pagan temples and participated in fertility orgies. I hope you continued past that verse and on into the Chapter 2, where Paul hammers the Jewish Christians for all the wrongful things they were involved in. Finally, I hope you get that he hammers both groups for being judmental of each other. Please sit down and read the entire letter, the purpose of the letter to both encourage and bring harmony to the Church is Rome is really lovely, especially Chapter 7 where Paul talks about his own struggles.
I am grateful that you want to be a devoted and strong Christian, but please when posting try and read your words through someone who doesn't know Christ. Try to remember that we are not called to judge the world, we are called to bring the gospel as an invitation for every single person on this planet. Our job is to offer love, and to show the world the goodness of Christ through our deeds. Let the Holy Spirit do its job, let us both be know for loving all of our fellow man.
My appology for post 59. I intend no disrespect.
Loveschild, I hope you had a great Easter, too.
I guess it should go without saying, but my letter is going to cancel yours if they are keeping a tally. ;)
BTW, I always preferred giving my money to local indy bookstores anyway. Now I have another reason to continue.
http://tehdely.livejournal.com/88823.htm… (I know, I know, Livejournal.)
Perhpas it was best summed up where Jesus gave his sermon on the mount and asked his followers to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Jesus was reported to have stated that it is an incredibly narrow road to follow, however that simple, profound statement (oft stated in many other religions prior to and after Christianity)
is the single tenet that should define being Christian. The rest of it is really a lot of air. Unfortunately, as pointed out in more recent times, there are so many who profess their profound belief in Christ but are completely unlike Christ in their lives. Indeed, the
road is narrow.
Does Bezos somehow not know that these conservative fundamentalists read fewer books than almost any of the liberal, creative, progressive, lesbian and gay book readers and consumers?
Great news for local, independent booksellers, though! My apologies, Bezos; keep up the good work...the indy stores appreciate your stupidity.
My biggest problem with the bantown theory is that no one has pointed out any kind of automated mechanism for flagging things as adult in the manner that he describes. I want to believe in that theory (because I'd always imagined Amazon as a sensible company and would rather this all be a big mistake) but it doesn't look like users can flag things that way.
Also: Kim in Portland, I really love your posts.
"Loves Child," humans and human sexuality are not distinct and separate from one another, regardless of the sermons born of your own cognitive dissonance. Thus, any story about an individual human or group of humans is going to include by default something of their sexuality, regardless of sexual orientation.
Your learned behavior of guilt, shame and discomfort with your own sexuality is evident in your condemnation. Most phobias and disorders find something of their origins in such poisoned wellsprings of fear and ignorance.
Face your fears instead of howling about them in the darkness.
Your chosen xenophobia is a recipe for a miserable life. Why do you choose to embrace and to create such misery?
Break the surface; delve the depths. Discover a path to knowledge, understanding and enlightenment.
Bring'em on down.
Boeing too!
We build Hyundais
and Mercedes-Benzs,
we can build your planes as well!
(And with a tenth the bitchin and whining you'll get from a Seattle workforce.)
5.7 MILLION views-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHsDa9_HS…
I bet you granola munchers would rather hear it from Jewel?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6KtOfZKt…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQc4UcV6G…
of course...
( starts at about 1:55)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCyPZRCOB…
Still, a gay themed title---the classic autobiography: "My Father, Myself,"---doesn't have a sales ranking, while the equally well respected but primarily heterosexual "The Basketball Diaries" does. Both contain explicit sexual content intergral to the authors' stories, yet only the gay themed work has been delisted. Curious indeed.
Now my panties are wadded back up...
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/petition/…
I regret that your interpretation of the bible means that you believe it condemns homosexuality. I further regret that you believe this is more important than the biblical instructions to "love thy neighbor" and "judge not." However I strongly object to you forcing your religious views on the rest of us and trying to have your religious view of marriage stamped into civil law.
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
Amazon investors, beware. Us gays love to show bigoted businesses exactly what we think of them via closing our wallets and our purses.
I'm actually given to say that this is a glitch because a deliberate delisting would be much more coherent than this. The rep who said it was policy may have been wrongheadedly trying to cover.
I'll be keeping an eye on what happens with this, but I honestly think the best solution would be for Amazon not to de-rank anything. The actual adult material they sell can still be found by many tools not related to the rankings so it doesn't actually make it harder to find, and I doubt it's popular enough that it'd be all over the best seller lists.
Hopefully they'll either fix or abandon whatever they were testing soon and the site will be normal. But a public statement wouldn't hurt either.
I regret that you have made false assumptions about what, if anything, I believe about the Bible
I further regret that you want to force your interpretations of the Biblical instructions to "love thy neighbor" and "judge not" on the rest of society.
I strongly object to you forcing your religious views on the rest of us and trying to have your religious view of marriage stamped into civil law.
Matters of social policy and Civil Law should be decided based on what is best for society and not based on the religious beliefs of any sect or philosophy.
Do any of you "proud conservatives" still work for an AMERICAN company?
I guess that one plantation master as good as another when you've never known or wanted different or better, huh?
If your family tree don't fork, why would anyone expect that your life or perspective would ever deviate from the patch of earth upon which you fell head first into this world?
Keep on signing, boys; master needs a tune to carry him on his merry way to deposit all that money you've earned him into HIS bank account...overseas.