pssst pass it round... #amazonfail like...dude

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Do you remember 'WE ARE NOT AFRAID ?"

Shhh..listen. The latest hot citizen news is in: it's called...wait for it....

DAH DAH DAH!!!!......

AMAZONFAIL!

And it's all the buzz on uber-spakwad plebplob site Twitter apparently and a bunch of blogs.

And it's all do to with the heinous crime that Amazon had apparently temporarily delisted some gay and lesbian books from their searches or sale ranks. Apparently it was just a mistake anyway, but a look at the disproportionate furor it caused, or rather we are led to believe it caused shows that some people have got real problems with their political priorities, and without question that's being supported by the media.

Amazon are a huge business, and even it wasn't a mistake I kind of doubt they would have had any political reason reason behind this.

The Wall Street Journal's blog says:

"In the message, Amazon said it excludes “adult” material from searches and best-seller lists by not calculating their sales ranks. Mr. Probst (some blogger ? -j) wrote that the “adult” classification didn’t apply to several of the targeted books and that some adult-oriented books, including a hardcover edition of “Playboy: The Complete Centerfolds,” continued to maintain their ranking. He also pointed to the blog of Craig Seymour, a writer who has noted his troubles with Amazon and sales rankings since February"

And of course the WSJ loves it, as do the media as a whole, because the whole gay issue has tremendous utility as a proxy issue, and has possibly become the de facto way of chipping away at the status quo by proxy.

Personally, and I don't mean to be rude, but I don't see some extension of the civil rights movement at all in any of this stuff.

I don't know about this blogger, and it's not all gays, but overall you do see a group of hysterical people trying to rationalise themselves predominantly, and completely the wrong way and getting certain quite important things wrong and alienating themselves even more in the process.

And we see this repeated mistake, this goof, that unfortunately some gay people do have about themselves, that's been encouraged by the media, and that the media propagate which is that: the gay lifestyle has a right to be seen as an equal partner to heterosexuality, and in pretty much any context.

Some of it may just be people who mean well, but frankly, at some point, someone has to say something as well. Sure the odd article in the Daily Mail has come close to this at times, but I don't think seriously it can or should be seen as an equal partner per se and I think trying to do that is a distortion and error for a whole bunch of reasons, and in that sense Amazon are indeed under no obligation to present any books in principle, which is what these campaigners are worried about.

Note I'm not suggesting they shouldn't be published or burnt, what I'm saying is that how others treat them is an entirely different matter. It's not an issue of equality, as the WSJ suggest:

"Neil Giuliano, president of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, says in a statement: “GLAAD has reached out to Amazon.com and they indicate this was an error, so we expect to start seeing evidence of its correction immediately, and any loss of visibility of gay-themed books as a result of this error will be made right by Amazon … When people learn about the lives of gay and transgender people and the common ground we share, the culture changes and advances. It is so important that stories about the lives of our community are available, and that companies like Amazon promote these titles in an equal fashion”

Why ? I'm sure most people aren't that interested in them, and the idea that some gay romances excluded on Amazon represent some 'important' cultural fabric in general that people are 'missing out' on because they are gay is, just probably delusion if that's what's being suggested. And unfortunately we have seen several examples how the organised gay lobby globally is not a rational lobby, but an hysterical and even psychotic one, that's very much a complete renunciation of the most basic 'common ground'.

It's not just enough to blame the wider society for those problems.

If anything its real utility is as a proxy for other issues of 'diversity' and for the media to chip away at essentially Western, conservative, basically normative society.

I don't believe the gay lobby has a whole lot of power on its own or is that significant on its own. Most of that power comes from what the media grants it, and where it's supportive it is so for other reasons.

On the other hand I don't believe all gay people subscribe to the worst aspects of their own frankly dreadful representation and image.

We are probably going to talk about this more at some point, and it's something one always does with a bit of a heavy heart, as it's a topic no one really wants to talk about.

Tinpot fanatical war criminal regime and its supporters teaching homosexuality to primary school children

Guardian:

"A pilot scheme introducing books dealing with gay issues to children from the ages of four to 11 has just been launched in England's schools.

It is being argued that the books, one of which is a fairytale featuring a prince who turns down three princesses before falling in love and marrying a man, are necessary to make homosexuality seem normal to children. Fourteen schools and one local authority, backed by teaching unions and a government-funded organisation, are running the controversial scheme, which has been attacked by Christian groups.

Twenty years ago the publication of Jenny Lives With Eric And Martin for use in schools led to an angry public debate. In response the government passed Section 28, an amendment to the Local Government Act 1988, that prevented local authorities and, by extension, schools from 'promoting homosexuality' or its acceptability as a 'pretended family relationship'. The amendment was repealed in 2003 and this is the first large-scale attempt to put similar books back into the curriculum. Other books on the list of recommended texts for the schools, which have not been named, include a story about a spacegirl with two mothers and a baby penguin with two fathers. If successful, the scheme will be extended nationwide.

'The most important thing these books do is reflect reality for young children,' said Elizabeth Atkinson, director of the No Outsiders project that is being run by Sunderland and Exeter universities and the Institute of Education (IoE) in London. 'My background is in children's literature and I know how powerful it is in shaping social values and emotional development. What books do not say is as important as what they do.' Atkinson argued that leaving images of gay relationships out of children's books was 'silencing a social message', and could end up with children being bullied later in their school lives if they were gay or were perceived as gay. Atkinson and co-director Renee DePalma have received nearly £600,000 in funding from the Economic and Social Research Council and backing from the National Union of Teachers and General Teaching Council."

This is a couple of days old, and I really didn't want to write a about a topic like this. It almost would be one of those distraction issues, but sadly it does need looking at because of its gravity and what it speaks to more widely.

One has to ask what is next ? Teaching kids that the Iraq war is good and dropping cluster bombs on Iraqi kids is normal? Teaching kids that destroying swathes of Lebanon is good and normal ? Teaching kids that having a chip implanted in them is a reflection of reality ? Teaching kids that having their DNA stockpiled is normal ?

Actually, I think this is just beyond abnormal. And look any gay readers may take umbridge at what I am saying. Well I would say on this issue they would be plain wrong for doing so if they did.

Now I don't claim to be an expert on this topic, I need to do more research on this quite frankly so currently I can only speak in broad terms about this. In the UK, there was a militant gay lobby that grew more powerful it seemed, groups like Stonewall and people like Peter Tatchell (and I guess to some credit, at least time I looked Tatchell was strongly anti-ID cards) and so on, although there were various divisions between some individuals and organisations.

But if you listen to people like Ted Pike, and I should add I don't agree with everything Ted says, but in the US it would seem that a militant gay political axis if you like, didn't really have teeth or direction or perhaps even intent, until groups like the Anti Defamation League starting taking an interest in this and weaving it, along with other disconnected causes into their own curriculum and that is when it started to become a hammer to attack the non-gay and often traditionally Christian everybody else and society in general.

Now I don't know if that is what has happened here and I'm not saying it is, I just don't know, I think part of it is probably the alliance that started welding itself together and solidifying in the 80s with the Labour party with various minority issues, but what was happening in general though, and I think there is something of a vague consensus emerging on this, is that gay issues in terms of policy in particular have been so heavily promoted (and the key is the heavy promotion) not because there is an interest in gay issues per se but because they reflect a means of demeaning and undermining the position and natural exepectations of the state for everyone else, and if the lid can be lifted off this, then the lid can be lifted off of everything else policy wise.

And I don't believe that any semblance of a serious argument could ever be made that the rights of gay people were being encroached by not having a state-recognised 'marriage' or by not adopting children.

And it's probably worth pointing out that people like Melanie Phillips in the Daily Mail, leaving aside her pro-War on Terror, pro-Israel is a victim nonsesne, has been a strong critic in particular of this idea of putting sexual orientation above religious and indeed other cultural values in terms of both policy and legislation.

So sadly, you have to wonder, what kind of reality does this Elizabeth Atkinson reside in, that she and her axis, think they have some divine right to make victims of children with this kind of horrendous, potty self-indulgent social engineering ? Why are these people having an influence on our education system ? Why are they getting £600,000 and being endorsed by the National Union of Teachers?

A great many people would say that they can't think of anything more debasing and more horrendous and more reckless , but I would also say I can't think of anything more divorced from reality than the gratuitous promotion of homosexuality to young children, and it speaks of something gone disastrously wrong in terms of thinking. This isn't 'capitalism' or something, this is politics, this is activism at work in the system that is full of burning hatred and personal amibition and it speaks to something gone so monstrously wrong that one wonders how something so wrong could have been left to fester for so long without any restraint.

Obviously there was a very strong case for Section 28 as it turns out.


education children Section 28 Elizabeth Atkinson No Outsiders