Joseph Nicolosi book banned by Amazon.com under pressure from LGBT activists

Which books can you buy at Amazon.com?

Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler.

The pro-Stalin works of Stalin apologist Grover Furr, an American academic who argues in books and in lectures (see this video clip) that Stalin killed nobody, and committed no crimes. (Between 7-10 million Ukrainians and other Soviet citizens died in the Stalin-engineered famine called the Holodomor alone).

A history of Communism by the white supremacist David Duke.

The SS Leadership Guide, translated from the original German.

A highly influential text by the Islamist radical Sayyid Qutb, Milestones, which calls on Muslims to wage relentless global jihad against non-Muslims and insufficiently radical Muslims, until the entire world is under radical Islamic rule.

You can buy

Do you know what you cannot buy? The works of the late Dr. Joseph Nicolosi. From NBC News:

Amazon has removed English-language books by a man largely considered “the father of conversion therapy” from its site following mounting pressure from LGBTQ activists. Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, founder of the now-shuttered Thomas Aquinas Psychological Clinic, as well as the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), authored several how-to guides directed to parents of LGBTQ youth, including “A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality.” His books are some of the most well-known works about conversion therapy, the pseudoscientific practice of trying to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. “I would say many survivors of conversion therapy could trace their trauma to Nicolosi,” Sam Brinton, head of advocacy and government affairs at The Trevor Project and a survivor of conversion therapy, told NBC News. “His work lent credibility under the guise of ‘science’ to conversion therapy, even though the practice has been disputed and discredited as dangerous and harmful by medical experts.”

Do you see what’s happening? Amazon.com now bans the sale of works of an author that LGBT activists find offensive. Woke capitalism at its finest. Where does this stop?

Now that LGBT activists have shown that they can prevail upon Woke Capitalists to blacklist an author, will they come after other writers who offend them? Why shouldn’t they? What’s the limiting principle here?

You can buy the work of Dr. Joseph Goebbels on Amazon.com, but not the work of Dr. Joseph Nicolosi!

Want to claim that Nicolosi’s work is unscientific? That’s a sham excuse. Amazon.com also sells books about healing through crystal therapy. And why not? Crystal therapy is sheer quackery, but that has nothing to do with whether or not a bookseller ought to sell it.

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. I find every book in my list above repulsive, but I would defend Amazon selling each one.

These people, these activists, are totalitarian. They are trying to control via pressure on Woke Capitalists what people are allowed to read. People acting on the theories of Karl Marx, V.I. Lenin, and Mao Zedong massacred over 100 million people in the 20th century — and you can buy titles by Marx, Lenin, and Mao on Amazon.com. The Nazis killed over 6 million in the Holocaust, and were chiefly responsible for a world war that killed millions more — yet you can buy the works of Adolf Hitler and his propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels on Amazon.com.

But not Dr. Joseph Nicolosi.

Why are Nicolosi’s ideas more dangerous than those of Marx, Hitler, Lenin, Mao, Goebbels, Qutb, and David Duke? So dangerous, in fact, that Amazon, which is by far the most powerful force in global book sales and publishing, has decided that it must unperson Nicolosi?

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?

What is it going to take to wake up Congress to the power that Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, and other media and publishing giants have over discourse? Nine out of 10 e-books sold come from Amazon. Forty-two percent of hardcover books sold come through Amazon. Back in 2013, I was one of the many Hachette authors who felt the sole of Amazon’s boot on book sales when it radically slowed down sales of Hachette titles in order to force the publisher to agree to its terms. I’m telling you, allowing a single retailer to have so much power over book sales is dangerous — especially now that we see that this mega-retailer can be pushed by Social Justice Warriors into cancelling an author’s works.

Again, you don’t have to agree with the theories of Joseph Nicolosi to recognize that an important line has been crossed here. In the eyes of the world’s largest bookseller, Joseph Nicolosi is more dangerous than Hitler, Lenin, Mao, and Marx, because the Homintern says so.

UPDATE: I get it if people outside the publishing business don’t grasp the power of Amazon over publishing. Amazon does not have a monopoly on book sales, but rather operates as a monopsony, defined as “a market structure in which a single buyer substantially controls the market as the major purchaser of goods and services offered by many would-be sellers.” If Amazon decides that it will not sell books by a particular author, then that author will not have a career. Period. No publisher can afford to alienate Amazon. Look, I love Amazon, and use it all the time, but it is dangerous for a single retailer to have so much power over book publishing. Not many people are going to stand up for the late Dr. Nicolosi, but it ought to unnerve all readers that Amazon trusts its readership so much that it is willing to sell books authored by murderous tyrants, bloodthirsty religious fanatics, and stone-cold racists … but not a psychology book by a deceased Catholic psychotherapist from California who believed, rightly or wrongly, that homosexuality could be cured.

Why is Joseph Nicolosi a greater threat to the common good than Hitler, Mao, or David Duke? That Amazon has made that decision, and has decided to de-list Nicolosi’s books, is chilling, especially given Amazon’s monopsony power over the publishing market. And you don’t have to be a Nicolosi supporter to see that.

UPDATE:Theologian Denny Burk is not a fan of Nicolosi’s theories, but he understands what’s at stake:

The Amazon ban and the suggested legislation to ban conversion therapy [aren’t] limited to Joseph Nicolosi’s teachings. This ban defines any attempt to change one’s sexual desires as “conversion therapy.” Well guess what? That means that every single Christian who believes that that God’s grace changes sexual sinners would be implicated by this ban and by such legislation. What Amazon has done is really chilling. They have now set the precedent for banning Christian teaching about sexuality from the books that they sell on their platform. Just to be clear again. I am not saying that Nicolosi’s books are in any way “Christian teaching.” I’m saying that orthodox 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. To the outside world, that may sound like “conversation therapy.” To those of us who are orthodox Christians, it sounds like the faith once for all delivered to the saints (Jude 3). What that means is that Christianity long been on a collision course with the new secular orthodoxy on sexuality. It means that we may have our books banned from Amazon. I myself have two that would have to be excluded if Amazon were to apply its content guidelines to my books as they have to Nicolosi’s. And I wouldn’t be alone. 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.

UPDATE.2: Is Sam Brinton telling the truth about his conversion therapy? There are serious inconsistencies in his story. He claims, in lurid detail, that he was tortured in this therapy for years, but can’t remember the name of the doctor — or whether it was a doctor at all (versus a “religious therapist”).