Posted on 07/05/2019 7:39:06 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Amazon has permanently removed from its website books by Joseph Nicolosi, who was often referred to as the "father of conversion therapy," in a move some say portends censorship of anything Christian regarding sexuality.
For months the global online retail giant has been petitioned by LGBT activists who have urged the company to discontinue selling the works of Nicolosi, a clinical psychologist and Catholic author who died in 2017, NBC reported this week. Nicolosi wrote several works about homosexuality in men and therapeutic approaches for persons with same-sex attraction.
A Change.org petition that was launched five months ago and has garnered over 80,000 signatures that asks Amazon to stop selling his books links conversion therapy to aversion therapy practices such as electroshock and taking medications to "cure" homosexuals into becoming heterosexual. In the past few years, several states have adopted bans on so-called conversion therapy for minors. LGBT activists assert the practice is harmful, discredited, and contributes to the suicide of LGBT persons.
Yet some say the phrase is a ruse and that Amazon's decision is hypocritical in light of other materials from which they continue to profit.
In an email to The Christian Post on Thursday, Daren Mehl, president of Voice of the Voiceless — who was a recent guest on the CP podcast about men who left the gay identity and life behind — insists that the phrase conversion therapy is a manipulative "scarecrow" concocted by LGBT lobby groups. Today, no electrical shocks or similarly abusive methods are employed and what is being contested around the country is talk therapy, he maintains.
"The truth is that sexual orientation is fluid, and one can experience a change in desires of sexual attraction from same-sex attraction to opposite-sex attraction. While the LGBT lobby has millions of dollars at their disposal to obfuscate the truth and influence culture, no amount of money can change the truth," Mehl stressed.
Amazon also disallowed Catholic attorney David A. Robinson from selling his book on the platform in which he shares his personal story of leaving homosexuality. Robinson's short book, Orientation and Choice: One Man’s Sexual Journey, was sold on Amazon for nearly a year before it was removed last week. When Robinson inquired why this happened, an Amazon representative informed him in an email — which was forwarded to CP — that during a review they found his work was in "violation of our content guidelines" but did not explain why or point out which parts were objectionable.
"Their desire to remove books of psychologists will not change the truth. Banning books of our life stories is in vain, we still exist, and we will still speak of the good works of Jesus," Mehl said.
Mehl added that while he never went through any of Nicolosi's specific counseling models, he has read a few of his books, some of which articulated remarkable parallels to his own journey and explained some of his life experiences.
Author and Eastern Orthodox Christian Rod Dreher said Amazon's move was the latest example of "woke" capitalism.
"It is only a matter of time before LGBT activists start attacking any book that contradicts their ideology — because now Amazon has shown that it will knuckle under. You don’t have to agree with Nicolosi’s theories to be alarmed at what Amazon has done here," he wrote on his blog on The American Conservative on Wednesday.
Dreher noted that Amazon still sells books like Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampft, white supremacist David Duke's book on Communism, and works by Grover Furr, an apologist for Joseph Stalin. For those who assert Nicolosi's work is not scientific and should therefore not be sold, that is not a valid excuse, he opined, since the website also sells books on healing through crystal therapy.
"What is it going to take to wake people up to the power these LGBT activist fanatics assert over freedom of speech and inquiry? Where does it stop, their censorship?" he asked.
Similarly, theologian Denny Burk, a professor at Boyce College in Kentucky, emphasized on Wednesday that although he is not a fan of Nicolosi nor of what he advocated, Amazon's action was "chilling" because in so doing they "set the precedent for banning Christian teaching about sexuality from the books that they sell on their platform."
"Christianity has always taught that Jesus both saves and sanctifies sinners — meaning that the Gospel helps us to change, even in our wayward sexual desires," Burk said.
"The sexual revolutionaries used to ask us, 'How does my gay marriage harm you?' Well, this is how. They have gone from 'live and let live' to 'affirm our sexual immorality, or we will tar and feather you as causing the deaths of gay people.' It is a calumny and a lie, but that is where we are."
Yet in addition to Amazon's move to appease activists, Mehl expressed disappointment that he has also observed some professing Christians dismiss talk therapy for unwanted sexual attractions as akin to heresy since such counseling is not sufficiently "biblical" as they see it.
"These same believers don't go after oncologists with the same zeal they do psychologists. One deals with healing the body, the other with healing the mind. There are a plethora of scriptures which speak to renewing our minds and taking every thought captive and submitting it to Christ," he explained.
"Therapists worth their salt have a Judeo-Christian worldview and understand that men who want out of the homosexual life can leave. There is actual evidence that this happens. Therapists affirming the false belief of 'born gay' or the trans-affirming therapists who believe that patients might be 'born in the wrong body' are the ones that should get criticism as their worldview is based on a false faith that science doesn't even support."
Most homosexuals were sexually molested as children and the continued behavior is a coping mechanism that fails to resolve the inner conflict between the learned behavior and the natural desire for heterosexual relationships.
Therefore "conversion therapy" is "RAPE THERAPY"!
This posting by FR’s says it best and when printed up makes a good bumper sticker or poster;
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3749188/posts/#40
it reads CELEBRATE PERVERSITY each word is against a rainbow background. I suggest adding VOTE PERVOCRAT when you print it up and place that below the two words.celebrate, perversity
The clear fact that of all the Left/Democrat Party groups the GIBLETS are by far the most intolerant, the most bullying and the most nasty of all doesn’t bode well for pushback by the Right who are, for far too many (especially those holding political office), scared obama-less out of their freaking minds of the Left/Democrat Party.
One of the main reasons the alphabet soup community can’t stand Dr. Nicolosi is because he’s been incredibly effective. If he weren’t they wouldn’t care about him.
See: Nolte: Disney Book Burners Remove ‘Offensive’ Joke from ‘Toy Story 2’
https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2019/07/04/disney-book-burners-remove-offensive-joke-from-toy-story-2/
I know there’s truth in that.
We are allowing totalitarianism to be privately installed in this nation.
We either stand up to it and stop it in it’s tracks, or this nation is going to be a living hell in ten to twenty.
Republish the whole thing under the name Mohammed bin Hussein and title it Allah and You, Going Straight. They won’t touch it.
I wonder if Amazon will have a book burning for those left unsold......
And still no move to break up these monopolies.
bkmk
Amen.
I was shocked, unbelieving and then cynically accepting when ABEbooks was taken over by the evil Amazon.
An old SF novel by the socialist American Frederik Pohl had something like “food” , “fuel” etc. left as conglomerates monopolized everything. I thought it was so stupid I didn’t read the novel (JEM).
In later years I keep seeing it true (Kraft and a few others have all kinds of food items, ——Look at the list of Gillette items —not simply for shaving but lots of stuff-—and even my eye drops were taken over by their competitor recently).
Seems like the Nazis never die. Their costumes just change.
“Fahrenheit 451.”
5.56mm
Yup. I had intuited the “Rule of Threes” before I found that it was already discovered. By that I mean that there are two market leaders, oligopolistically competitive (e.g. Coke and Pepsi) a distant third, and then a number of boutique and niche players with no hope of breaking into the top two.
Even in areas where there seem to be more vendors, there is usually ownership of several companies by one big company. There are some areas where you have one very dominant player (Gillette, or Pepsico’s Frito-Lay) and a bunch of smaller players fighting for remaining marketshare (Edgewell[Schick/Wilkinson/Harry’s], BIC, Unilever[Dollar Shave Club]).
As an extreme example of market consolidation, I like to use candy bars. How many candy bar companies can you buy from at the corner drug store? Mars, Hershey, Nestle...
How many could I buy when I was a paperboy in 1973, from a candy rack considerably smaller than the one in a modern CVS or Walgreen’s?
M&M/Mars, Hershey, Nestle, Leaf (Whoppers), Hollywood (Zero, Payday, many others), Peter Paul (Almond Joy, Mounds, York Peppermint Patty), Beech-Nut (Life Savers), Nabisco (Junior Mints, Sugar Babies), Holloway/Beatrice (Milk Duds), Heide (Jujubes, Chocolate Babies), Bonomo (Turkish Taffy), Sandard/Curtiss (Baby Ruth), Heath (Heath Bar), and more that I don’t remember. (a couple of bit players like Tootsie Roll, and Ferrara Pan’s parent still exist as independents).
Of course, the best selling bars themselves have mostly survived. But we lost having a vibrant candy industry scattered throughout the country to a handful of factories, largely in Mexico and Canada (combination of sugar tariffs & NAFTA).
And the candy bars are neither better nor cheaper (even adjusted for overall inflation).
I keep repeating "First they burned their books, then they burned the people" about WWII.
Someone said recently Amazon physically destroys items it does not sell (not only books but other merchandise items).
If they didn't, they are afraid people would say "where are the bargain sales, clearance items, stuff heading to the Dollar Tree stores and so on?"
Amazon then would have people waiting for the Amazon bargain sales. They destroy everything----which means environmental problems and having to make new things which again hurts the environment.
P.S. As a library employee from 1969-2017 I can tell you a secret: Books are culled from shelves often and put into garbage dumpsters (not book sales and not recycling) and when you donate books and magazines they throw out 90% into the garbage.
Takes too much staff time to add magazines on databases and store them, and only books they really want are then catalogued, shelved and maintained. Thus, they just throw them into the garbage. Recycling might leave evidence found by scavengers and questions about why they don't shelve these.The dirty little secret of librarians.
Personal story: I saw a donation of a fresh new copy of And That's The Way It Isn't By Brent Bozell (about leftist media bias) at the university library and then later went to trace its fate---it was found under "discard." Destroyed. The mostly gay and 99% leftist librarians refused any non leftist viewpoint books.
fabulous choices of great lost candy bars of the past.....
/////////////////////////////////
I can now read your post without having to see it through wells of tears because...... Necco is gone...…...
Barely. Don’t want to be a snowflake but I loved Necco.
And the original Mars Bar with full almonds in the thick milk chocolate.
Those were worth the 5 cents (!!) I paid in the 1950s. A golden era.
I, too found that marrying a sweet woman compensates for so much in life.
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