The Gaytheist Agenda

There’s been quite a buzz the past few days over Amazon.com and their removal of rankings on LGBT themed books. Amazon first issued a statement that it was done out of consideration for all their customers and that certain “adult” material had to be unranked for that reason.

Probst, the author of a novel with gay characters in the Old West, said he was perplexed by the move and used his status as a publisher to contact Amazon for an explanation. He said he received the following response from an Amazon Advantage service representative:

In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude “adult” material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.

Then they changed their story and claimed there had been a system “glitch” that they were trying to fix as quickly as possible. Needless to say many of us weren’t buying it after their official statement excerpted above. In fact my wife and I were looking for a new outlet to buy from and sell through just today. However I stumbled across something that, if it’s true, may lend credence to the “glitch” story. It seems, at least from this post, that a heroin junkie has a bone to pick with gay people he considers “hypocrites”. He decided that hacking and manipulating Amazon’s system would be the way to do it. (Full disclosure: I don’t understand computer languages or coding in the slightest but my wife, who very much does, read over the post and said to the best of her knowledge what this guy claims is possible. I’ve substituted asterisks for any lines of coding or URLS he includes. You can see them at the link if you wish. )

Amazon removed its customer-based reporting of adult books yesterday. I guess my game is up! Here’s a nice piece I like to call “how to cause moral outrage from the entire Internet in ten lines of code”.

I really hate reputation systems based on user input. This started a while back on Craigslist, when I was trying to score chicks to do heroin with. My listings like “looking to get tarred and pleasured” and “Searching for a heroine to do the paronym of this sentence’s lexical subject” kept getting flagged. The hypocracy of the gay community disgusted me. They would flag my ads down but searching craigslist for “pnp” or “tina” reveals tons of hairy dudes searching for other hairy dudes to do meth with. How is homosexuality and meth okay but heterosexuality and heroin bad? So I decided to get them back and cause a few hundred thousand queers some outrage.

I’m logged into Amazon at a far later date and see it has a “report as inappropriate” feature at the bottom of a page. I do a quick test on a few sets of gay books. I see that I can get them removed from search rankings with an insignificant number of votes.

I do this for a while, but never really get off my ass to scale it until recently.
So I script some quick bash.
*********
There’s some quick code to grab all the Gay and Lesbian metadata-tagged books on amazon. Then I pull out all the IDs of the given books from those URLs:

and I have a neat little list of the internal product ID of every fag book on Amazon.

Now from here it was a matter of getting a lot of people to vote for the books. The thing about the adult reporting function of Amazon was that it was vulnerable to something called “Cross-site request forgery’. This means if I referred someone to the URL of the successful complaint, it would register as a complaint if they were logged in. So now it is a numbers game.

I know some people who run some extremely high traffic (Alexa top 1000) websites. I show them my idea, and we all agree that it is pretty funny. They put an invisible iframe in their websites to refer people to the complaint URLs which caused huge numbers of visitors to report gay and lesbian items as inappropriate without their knowledge.

I also hired third worlders to register accounts for me en masse. If you ever need a service like that, you can find them in a post like this advertising in the comments:
*****
Then they would log into the accounts, save the cookies in a cookie file and send it to me.

Then I used the cookie files like so to automated-report all the books:
*****

The combination of these two actions resulted in a mass delisting of queer books being delisted from the rankings at Amazon.

I guess my game is up, but 300+ hits on google news for amazon gay
and outrage across the blogosphere
ain’t so bad.

The only person to figure it out was dely from Six Apart: ******
but he has been ground zero at my work, cleaning up my messes before. Who else trolls via moral outrage? Not many in the scene that I know of.

So it’s possible Amazon didn’t purposely relegate Heather Has Two Mommies and thousands of other LGBT titles to the “adult” category intentionally. Of course that’s the case it would have been better if they’d not issued that ridiculous statement claiming they had to protect all of their customer base (code for “coddle the fundies”). If they’d merely played the computer glitch card in the first place it would have, at the very least, given them time to work while they figured out what to do next. Then they could have figured out that they really did have a glitch–or a hacker–which may very well have been the case.

At any rate, don’t ditch Amazon just yet. Wait and see what happens, and if things don’t return to normal post haste there are many other sellers in the sea.

 
BTW, “weev”; next time you decide to play childish revenge games you might want to choose the right target. Gay meth users don’t give a fig about you and your heroin junkie girl hookups. They aren’t the ones flagging your stupid Craigslist posts. Why don’t you instead look toward the busybody people who spend their time trying to run everybody else’s lives: the RRRW “moral values” crowd.

 

 
Update: After further research, particularly considering what my lovely wife has discovered, it appears Amazon is not innocent regardless of who did what. We’ll definitely be shopping elsewhere and are seeking other outlets for our affiliate accounts. As I said above, there are plenty of other sellers in the sea.

 

I can’t say that I’m surprised, and I’m definitely delighted. You may recall that I held my wedding at the Cypress Hotel, which is a part of the Kimpton chain. Sapphocrat and I also stayed in one of their beautiful suites the night before and the night of our wedding and were treated like royalty. I couldn’t recommend them more. But on with the story.

Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants has announced that it earned the top rating of 100 percent in the 2009 Corporate Equality Index (CEI), an annual survey administered by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation. Kimpton joins the ranks of 259 other major U.S. businesses which receive top marks for their treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) employees and consumers.

In 2008, Kimpton became the only company where all hotels were members of the International Gay & Lesbian Travel Association (IGLTA) and all hotels are TAG Approved, the largest directory of gay friendly hotels and resorts. Additionally, on May 1, 2008, at the IGLTA Convention in Las Vegas, Kimpton won the PlanetOut 2008 Hotel Group of the Year award. For more information about Kimpton’s LGBT program, visit Kimpton Hotels LGBT

Incidentally it was the Planet Out award that led us to Kimpton and the Cypress Hotel. When we read how LGBT friendly they were we wanted to give them our business and we were very satisfied with the results. Everybody, from the front desk clerks to our wedding planner to the waitstaff, were amazing.

The CEI rated 583 businesses in total, evaluating LGBT-related policies and practices including non-discrimination policies, transgender health benefits and domestic partner benefits. Kimpton’s efforts in ensuring LGBT equality in each of the survey’s main criterion earned it the prestigious 100 percent ranking. Kimpton was the first hospitality company to score a 100 percent on the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index back in 2004, and has secured that perfect score every year since then.

…..

Like many of Kimpton’s programs that anticipate the preferences of its guests, such as women travelers, business travelers, pet owners, health and wellness minded travelers, the company’s welcoming stance toward the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community exemplifies its commitment to inclusion. For more information on the 2009 Corporate Equality Index, or to download a free copy of the report, visit HRC CEI

Kimpton has definitely earned that 100%. They’ll be first on my list whenever I’m travelling or if anybody needs a recommendation.

 

Bigots in South Carolina’s tourism agency yanked funding for an ad campaign designed to lure LGBT tourists from overseas. Of course the ads had already gone through, but they still refused to pay the nearly $5,000 fee for them. Now a S.C. LGBT rights group is going to pay the debt for them.

Thursday, South Carolina Pride Movement stepped in, placing its own version of the ad on its website and inviting people to contribute to pay the state debt.

The rejigged ad now says South Carolina Will Be So Gay.

“We feel it is our duty to keep the word that the South Carolina Department of Parks, Recs, and Tourism gave through their contract with ARMO Worldwide and we intend to raise the necessary funds since they have refused to pay their bill,” said Ryan Wilson, President of SC Pride.

“Someone needs to rise above and do the right thing, and the GLBT community of South Carolina should be the ones to do it, and the SC Pride Movement is going to take the lead,” Wilson said.

“South Carolina may not be “so gay” currently but we are going to show the world that we can be and we WILL BE so gay, and gay friendly some day!”

Wilson said that if it raises more than the $5,000 necessary to pay ARMO it will benefit the SC Pride Festival and Parade.

Atlanta, Boston and New Orleans also were part of the ad campaign. None of those cities backed out.

Good on them!

 

We found out a few days ago that they finally assigned a number to the Marriage Ban Initiative here and it’s #8 on the ballot. In response, my better half pulled an all nighter and created some new designs. Here they are and as always they’re available on a wide variety of merchandise including clothing, hats, yard-signs, bumper stickers, buttons and more.

There’s also this one, which we wore to Pride this weekend. It got lots of attention and has been selling well the past few weeks.

So there they are. The latest designs to help beat down the hateful anti-marriage amendment. Enjoy!

 

You will no longer be seeing them at this blog. I won’t be quoting them or linking them for any reason. Sapphocrat has the story. From now on all news will be coming from other sources. I don’t think any of us will be missing out by avoiding them, and many other worthy sources will have a chance to be heard. It’s sort of a win-win situation.

 

You heard me right. Kmart is now selling Abstinence Pants. I don’t know if they’re trying to steal some of Wal-Mart’s RRRW customer base or what, but it’s pretty freaky. here’s a sample of their selection.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against people who choose to wait until marriage. But does anybody believe that a pair of sweatpants with True Love Waits written across the backside is going to inspire abstinence? (While the photo is of the front, the back has the same slogan.) Furthermore, why is it that, as always, these things are only made for women?

This time they’re attempting to bully Marriott International into removing “sexually explicit” movies from its in-room pay-per-view options. Apparently groups like American Family Association believe that adults shouldn’t have the opportunity to decide for themselves what they will view in the privacy of their own hotel rooms.

Several conservative groups, including the American Family Association, are asking Marriott International Inc. to stop giving hotel guests the option of ordering pay-per-view movies with strong sexual content - gay and straight.

AFA, based in Tupelo, said 47 “pro-family leaders” have signed a letter asking chain’s chief executive, J.W. Marriott Jr., for a meeting to discuss their concerns.

Marriott was told that stopping “porn movies” would be in keeping with the corporation’s position of “promoting the well-being of children and families,” AFA said in a news release.

Marriott’s website says the hotel chain has about 3,000 properties in the U.S. and 67 other countries and territories. AFA said most of these hotels offer in-room movies with pornographic content.

Roger Conner, vice president of communications for Marriott International, said Thursday the company would review the group’s letter and the request for a meeting.

Conner said Marriott and most hotel chains offer in-room entertainment that includes a wide range of films and “just one of those is adult offerings.”

“Every guest can quickly and easily block out just the adult movie offering by either calling the front desk or using their (TV) remote pad in the room,” Conner said. “It does not appear at all if the guest does not want the offering.”

…..

Among those participating in the letter to Marriott, according to AFA, are James Dobson, chairman of Focus on the Family; Tony Perkins, president of Family Research Council; Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission; Bishop Harry Jackson, chairman of High Impact Leadership Council; and Robert Peters, president of Morality in Media.

This is utterly ridiculous. If a guest doesn’t want adult movies shown in their room they simply don’t have to order them. If they want to prevent another individual, such as a minor staying with them, ordering them, they can ask the hotel management to block them from the room. It’s that simple. There is no reason for the RRRW busybodies to make it impossible for everybody who stays at a Marriott hotel to be unable to see a particular form of entertainment simply because they themselves wish not to.

In case they’re not able to understand the implications of their bullying tactics let me propose this. Perhaps atheists and other non-Christians should band together and demand that Bibles be banned from all hotel rooms. After all, if we don’t believe in the Bible and don’t wish to see them then why should something we don’t approve of be so readily available in the nightstand of every single hotel room of the nation? Consider what is in the Bible–infanticide, genocide, incest, prostitution, murder, misogyny and a whole host of other heinous atrocities. Yet it’s readily available in nearly every hotel room within easy access of any child.

Of course I’m not seriously proposing the above, but merely offering it as food for thought. The RRRW wishes to control everything and everyone, yet rends its garments if anybody utter a peep against them (let alone attempt to thwart their megalomania). This nation was built on individual freedoms, and that is exactly what groups like FOF, AFA and others are attempting to destroy under the boot of “Family Values”. It’s time that We the People fight back if we are to keep those precious freedoms.

 

You know people like this ‘worry me’ more so than disturbing or angering me. There’s something else going on in their lives, that they would waste such energy on the invasion of consenting adults personal lives/homes/and bedrooms. There are so many other more urgent and pressing causes they could concern themselves with. World Hunger, The Economy, The War, The Lack of Health Care etc. and they’re worried about sex - I guess that’s what happens when you’re not happy in yours. I dont mean it as a laugh or for a joke.

 
They are the new Puritans, and they seem to think that if only life would return to how it was when Leave it to Beaver ruled the airwaves–the “Good Old Days”–things would be right with the world again. What they don’t understand is that the Good Old Days never existed. What they see on television as a depiction of the 50’s or whatever era they think was idyllic is pure fiction and can never be created or captured. As much as I love utopian fiction I’m wise enough to understand it’s just fiction. I don’t seriously expect to create a utopia of any kind, nor do I anticipate anybody ever could. Sadly some people think that if they just yell loud enough or apply enough force they can get their utopia (of course one person’s utopia is another person’s dystopia).

 
I don’t see them applying their time, money and energy to serious problems like poverty, health care, world hunger or global warming any time soon. That takes genuine concern with the needs of others, and I don’t get the impression that they have that despite their constant calls to “please think of the children”. They could prove me wrong at some point in the future, however…