The Twitterverse and blogsophere are abuzz about Amazon.com 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.”

Well, isn't homophobia an adult topic?

Still, they're assholes.

I wouldn't take this as some homophobic action on Amazon's part. In the case of the books mentioned by name in this article, they do offer sexual depictions that could be deemed adult, whether they had been given a heterosexual portrayal or a homosexual portrayal. Sure, it is very likely Amazon made a decision to label these books adult after being pressured into it by conservative family groups and concerned persons, and certainly these works are more literary in nature than your typical adult content smut, but in all actuality these books do contain more mature content, so Amazon's decision isn't entirely bogus.

The problem is that we gays always get our panties in a bunch and perceive this sort of stuff as some great campaign against homosexuals and ignore the possibility that there are sometimes greater factors that play into a decision than "homophobia". But if we raise a big enough stink we can get Amazon to try and pass this off as a "technical glitch" and everything will goes back to the way it was before and at least one party is happy.

So even if there are no erotic scenes, just a kiss like any old-fashion hetero-book, it is considered adult?

What about "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.”"?

Oh gosh. It was just a glitch. Oh and the search results thing...normally the first results shown are the most clicked/relevant in a certain category. No surprise there. Should I be "offended" because when I search "straight" the first book that shows up is gay?

Well, no if there aren't erotic scenes I don't think it should be considered adult. I can't speak for every book that's lost its ranking, I was only referring to the two listed in your article, as they do depict sexual situations.

I don't know that I have a good explanation for the "Preventing Homosexuality" book other than the fact that those sorts of searches are usually put in order of popularity. In this case it's possible they've had a lot of queries from parents using terms like "homosexuality" to find books on how to prevent it.

It's all your fault Mr. Link

Popularity rank makes sense. I guess I did overreact.