Amazon has removed “gay cure” books by a well-known conversion therapy author from its UK and US sites.
The main book in question was one called, A Parents Guide To Preventing Homosexuality, by Joseph Nicolosi.
Nicolosi, who died in 2017, was the co-founder of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality and a prominent voice in the “ex-gay” movement.
Rojo Alan, from Peterborough, wrote to Amazon several times asking it to remove Nicolosi’s books.
After receiving no response, Alan made a Facebook post on May 31 calling for Amazon and Wordery to take down “a number of homophobic books.”
Wordery, according to Alan, responded within 24 hours and removed the books from its listings.
But Amazon didn’t because it said the books didn’t violate the rules, according to Alan.
“So since then, I had been working on getting these books pulled,” Alan said. “I contacted Amazon regularly to speak to them about the books, about how unethical they are.”
Alan used social-media sites to ask people to leave bad reviews of the books, and also began researching the ways in which they violated Amazon’s rules of publishing.
“Once I gathered everything I went back to Amazon and I threw all the information I had at them in several conversations,” Alan said. “Yet I was given the same ‘we will refer this to the relevant team.'”
Alan last contacted Amazon on June 26.
As of yesterday (July 2), all of the books by Nicolosi had been removed.
“I’m currently in Starbucks, I’m so close to crying that all my efforts seem to have paid off,” Alan said.
Nicolosi once said, “There is no such thing as a homosexual.”
At a 2004 gay-cure rally in the US, he said, “Everyone is heterosexual. Some of you may have a homosexual problem. But you are still a heterosexual.”
“‘Homosexual’ is simply a description of a psychological disorder, prompted by an inner sense of emptiness. This,” he said, “by the way, is non-religious, non-political information. This is scientific information.”
Conversion therapy is still currently legal in the UK, although the Conservative party vowed to ban it in 2018.