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The Supreme Court Is Afraid of Gossip Girls and Boys

A post from DoubleX intern Jessica Dweck:

In an Onion-esque piece of news this week, the New York Times reported that Justice Anthony Kennedy ordered a student newspaper to “tidy up” its coverage of his recent appearance at a high school assembly. Kennedy, an ardent protector of First Amendment rights—and apparently, irony–allowed the young journalists to attend the event on the condition that his office would pre-approve any articles written about him.

Why would Justice Kennedy do such a thing? Two reasons. First, the Bill of Rights protects speech in part to encourage transparency and create a Millian slurry of ideas in which the creamy globs of truth eventually float to the top. An inaccurate or misleading quotation by reporters with exclusive access to Kennedy's speech would be nearly impossible to correct. Second, and perhaps more fundamentally, the Supreme Court has a deep-seated interest in practicing defensive PR ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX.)

Sh-amazon!

If you've been on Facebook or Twitter today, you've probably heard the news about Amazon: A few days ago, according to author Mark Probst, the company began removing the sales rankings from many gay- and lesbian-themed books, making it slightly harder to find them on the site. When Probst wrote to Amazon to ask what was up, the company replied that it had a policy of monitoring "adult" content on the site. Here's the letter he reprinted on his blog (which you can find here):

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. Hence, if you have further questions, kindly write back to us.

Best regards,

Ashlyn D

Member Services

Amazon.com Advantage

Now, to my mind, any censorship is bad censorship, so even if this action were limited to gay porn I'd be deeply bothered by it. But to make matters even more complicated, so far Amazon's little project has affected not only books that might be deemed to have full-on "adult" content but also literary novels, memoirs and books of poetry that portray gay sex. Among them? Paul Monette's Becoming a Man, Mark Wunderlich's Voluntary Servitude, and James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room.

The very problem with this enterprise is implicit in the quotes that Ashlyn D puts around "adult." Amazon gets to define it however it pleases, and in that definition takes away the act of choice from its consumers. One wonders, too: Why is it so bad for books to be "adult" when the company still sells plenty of sex toys over in its marketplace sub-section? Also: Why bother doing this when it's still pretty easy to find most of these books on the site? (If you have more info about the Amazon decision, email me at morourkexx@gmail.com.)