Republicans Demand Amazon Resume Selling Conversion Therapy Books

Republicans are up in arms after Amazon yanked a handful of conversion therapy books from their website earlier this month.

The late Dr. Joseph Nicolosi is considered the “father of conversion therapy,” co-founding the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) and writing a number of books propagating his ideas about “correcting” homosexuality into heterosexuality.

Conversion therapy has largely been proven not only ineffective, but harmful, and has triggered at least partial bans on the practice in 18 states so far, along with D.C. and Puerto Rico.

A change.org petition was started several months ago to remove Nicolosi’s books, several of which are aimed at parents attempting to “fix” their gay children, from Amazon. Roger Alan made a point of reaching out to both Amazon and another seller, Wordery, to get them to remove the potentially harmful books. Wordery complied right away, but Amazon took longer.

“We were feeling quite hopeless,” Alan said. “These books were outrightly lying to parents on how they could cure their children from being gay or trans and essentially teach ways you can mentally and physically abuse your child.”

Nicolosi’s books were finally removed from the site in early July, with Amazon ultimately claiming they violated its content guidelines.

But now Vice has discovered that the Republican Study Committee, which they note over 70% of GOP representatives in the House participate in, is complaining that removing the books amounts to censorship on Amazon’s part.

“In recent days, Amazon has banned the sale of several books addressing unwanted same-sex attraction,” said a flyer handed out amongst the committee.

“These books were available on Amazon until an LGBT activist repeatedly petitioned Amazon to remove the ‘homophobic books’ from the company’s website. Amazon removed Dr. Nicolosi’s books and those of several other authors on similar topics. It is not clear that any of the banned books have violated an Amazon policy, but rather that the company is choosing to censor speech.”

Conservative media has repeatedly slammed the decision, even going so far as to suggest eventually the Bible will be removed from circulation for its anti-gay passages.

The Republican Study Committee is calling for its members to pressure Amazon to reinstate sales of Nicolosi’s books. Because apparently it’s totally fine to ban gay rat weddings and harass drag queens until they go away, but putting a stop to perpetuating psychological harm on minors is censorship.

It should be noted that there is no shortage of books promoting conversion therapy or memoirs of "ex-gays" still available on Amazon. As far as anyone can tell, only Nicolosi's books have been removed thus far.