The Dispatch: More from CWR...

Amazon pulls transgender-critical book before relisting it

Amazon had told the publisher of Maria Keffler’s book “Desist, Detrans, & Detox: Getting Your Child Out of the Gender Cult” that it violated guidelines for submitting books with “content that is considered offensive.”

(Image: nito/Shutterstock)

Washington D.C., Apr 14, 2021 / 14:07 pm (CNA).

The online retail giant Amazon delisted a book critical of transgender ideology, before apparently relisting it for sale on Wednesday afternoon.

Maria Keffler, author of “Desist, Detrans, & Detox: Getting Your Child Out of the Gender Cult,” told CNA that her book is a “guidebook” for parents who don’t want to take an “affirmation-only” approach to matters of gender identity.

“Right now, out in the culture, that’s all that’s being given to parents,” Keffler said. She is co-founder of the Arlington Parent Coalition & Partners for Ethical Care.

The book was listed for sale on Amazon on April 7, Keffler said, but the listing was removed less than a week later.

On Wednesday afternoon, however, the book appeared for sale on Amazon’s online Kindle store.

A spokesperson for Amazon did not immediately respond to CNA’s request for comment.

Amazon had told the publisher of Keffler’s book that it violated guidelines for submitting books with “content that is considered offensive.”

In an email obtained by CNA from Amazon’s Kindle Account Review to Partners for Ethical Care – the publisher and copyright holder for Keffler’s book – Amazon stated: “We have temporarily suspended your KDP account because you have repeatedly submitted books through your account that violate our Content Guidelines as they contain content that is considered offensive.”

According to Partners for Ethical Care, “Amazon did not contact the author or publisher before cancelling the book.”

The delisting of Keffler’s book came less than two months after Amazon pulled the book “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment” by scholar Ryan T. Anderson.

Anderson, who is currently president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, said his book had been listed for sale on Amazon for three years after it was published in 2018. His book is a critical look at the transgender movement.

Following the removal of Anderson’s book – which is still not listed for sale on Amazon.com – four Republican senators sent a letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos questioning the removal of Anderson’s book. The four senators were Marco Rubio of Florida, Mike Lee of Utah, Mike Braun of Indiana, and Josh Hawley of Missouri.

In response, Brian Huseman, Amazon’s vice president of public policy, wrote that the company has “chosen not to sell books that frame LGBTQ+ identity as a mental illness.”

Keffler argued that proponents of an “affirmation-only approach” to gender identity demonstrate “cult-like” behavior.

She added that her book is well researched, and said, “I would like to know if anyone at Amazon actually read it, and I would like for them to point out what specifically in the book they consider problematic.”

“I would like to know what is offensive in this book,” she said, adding, “I think it’s a problem Amazon has taken one side on this issue. This is something they need to give better and deeper thought than they have.”

Both Keffler’s and Anderson’s books remain available for sale by other retailers, including Barnes and Noble.


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17 Comments

  1. Consumers need to stop ordering anything from Amazon as long as the company insists on being the arbiter of speech. Who are they to determine what is offensive? When Amazon stopped selling Ryan Anderson’s “When Harry Became Sally,” I reached my limit. I immediately ordered the book from another website and swore to never buy anything on Amazon again. If we boycott these companies that seek to control what we are allowed to purchase and read, maybe their pocketbooks will convince them that they can’t control free speech.

  2. Are the TG “issues” “The four senators were Marco Rubio of Florida, Mike Lee of Utah, Mike Braun of Indiana, and Josh Hawley of Missouri.” Their record on ethical legislation resembles in stead … the four Horsemen of the apocalypse.

    “Brian Huseman, Amazon’s vice president of public policy, wrote that the company has “chosen not to sell books that frame LGBTQ+ identity as a mental illness.”
    I still cannot believe that my church considers TG as a mental illness.

    • Since the alternative to considering it a mental illness is to consider it willful evil, you should be glad that the Church considers it a mental illness.

      And could you add to the beginning of each post a statement of whether you’re Catholic on any given day? I lose track. It looks as if now you’re claiming to be, given the “my church.”

      • Good call! Morganb also used to refer to himself as a Republican when it suited him. I guess that’s what happens when your thinking is closed minded and agenda driven rather than commited to honoring truth.

    • The reality of biological sex = true objective gender. One in the same.
      This new concept of “gender identity” = gender confusion = gender dysphoria: a subjective abnormal psychology.

  3. ““content that is considered offensive.””

    That’s nice. So I get to go on Amazon and send them a list of things that offend me and they’ll remove them?

  4. I find that Amazon has violated my guidelines for censorship and democracy and is offensive. I have delisted them as a vendor.

  5. Why do religious and conservative people act like they are incapable of creating their own popular Internet websites for commerce and social media?

    Why do religious and conservative people act like Communists, in that they seem to want to, in effect, nationalize (per socialism) all the privately-owned popular websites, so that those websites must offer content that Conservatives want them to offer?

    Jesus started with just 12 apostles who were horribly persecuted, and nevertheless they built up a huge, worldwide movement and Church.

    Liberty, if it means anything at all, must mean that Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, HBO, the New York Times, Fox News, etc., can keep any viewpoint that they deem immoral, offensive, or dangerous off their private property.

    If Amazon does not have the liberty to exclude books it finds objectionable, then neither will the Catholic Church have the liberty to only marry opposite sex couples.

    The reaction of conservatives to Ryan T. Anderson’s book being banned from Amazon makes me think that “the mask has slipped,” and we see that some conservatives don’t really believe in Liberty or conscience at all.

    I’ve gotten numerous emails from the Ethics and Public Policy Center in which I am told over and over again that Amazon should and must be forced, pressured, or threatened into selling and stocking books that go against the conscience of the owners of Amazon.

    My God!

    Are we Americans or not? Do we believe in the U.S. Constitution or not? What was the American War of Independence fought for?

    If I am missing something, I would love to be corrected and informed. Thank you.

    • Why do you discriminate against “religious” people – probably because the schools you attended and the media you believe, taught you that. Check out the Columbia Journalism Review to learn how many “ethical” news organizations have taken handouts from The Gates Foundation:

      “I recently examined nearly twenty thousand charitable grants the Gates Foundation had made through the end of June and found more than $250 million going toward journalism. Recipients included news operations like the BBC, NBC, Al Jazeera, ProPublica, National Journal, The Guardian, Univision, Medium, the Financial Times, The Atlantic, the Texas Tribune, Gannett, Washington Monthly, Le Monde, and the Center for Investigative Reporting; charitable organizations affiliated with news outlets, like BBC Media Action and the New York Times’ Neediest Cases Fund; media companies such as Participant, whose documentary Waiting for “Superman” supports Gates’s agenda on charter schools; journalistic organizations such as the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the National Press Foundation, and the International Center for Journalists; and a variety of other groups creating news content or working on journalism, such as the Leo Burnett Company, an ad agency that Gates commissioned to create a “news site” to promote the success of aid groups. In some cases, recipients say they distributed part of the funding as subgrants to other journalistic organizations—which makes it difficult to see the full picture of Gates’s funding into the fourth estate. ”
      https://www.cjr.org/criticism/gates-foundation-journalism-funding.php

    • Mr. de las Casas,
      Amazon is a monopoly that has been acting like a monopoly and engaging in unfair business practices. Amazon’s behavior would not have been a problem 15 years ago when it was popular but much smaller. Today, it’s having a de-stabilizing influence on the Republic and the freedoms that it protects.

      I have a question for you. Why don’t the non-religious and liberals care about the Republic and freedom?

      • Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, etc., are funny types of “monopolies.

        They dominate because, every day, lot of people choose to use them. But any given day, all those people could abandon them.

        Just ask once very popular sites and very wealthy sites such as MySpace and AOL.

        When a few very rich guys owned all the railroads, that was a very powerful sort of monopoly, since it was very hard for a newcomer to purchase all the necessary right-of-way land for a new railroad, and very expensive to buy all the trains to run on the tracks.

        But, by contrast, there is ENDLESS free space in cyberspace. And the start up costs for any website are incredibly low.

        Catholics and others right now are free to buy tons of conservative and Catholic books on the Ignatius Press website. I know, because I’ve bought lots of books from Ignatius Press.

        No one really needs to buy anything from Amazon.

        Other commercial websites really can compete against Amazon, if they have the spirit, gumption, and competitiveness to do so.

        Crying like a crybaby just won’t cut it, thought.

        If it should be determined by government regulators (aside: how odd that certain Conservatives who always want to eliminate virtually all regulation, and who brag about killing off the “Administrative State,” suddenly are so pro-regulation) are in fact pressuring suppliers to not do business with rivals, then “big government” should impose huge penalties on Amazon, much as it would any Mafia organization. But I’ve never heard that Amazon is doing Mafia stuff like that, not so far, anyways.

        The bottom line for me is that religious folk and conservative folk need to stick to basic principles, such as freedom of conscience, and the freedom to lose in the marketplace if other players in the game work harder and play smarter.

        If Conservatives take the view (as many seem to be doing now) that the Constitutional and Natural Law principle of liberty of conscience is really ONLY for Conservatives, then this whole “American experiment” in liberty is doomed.

        Yes, there is no doubt that many or most on the Progressive side only want freedom of conscience for Progressives, and want to use government power and corporate power to force things onto conservatives and religious people that they cannot accept as a matter of conscience.

        But so what? Two wrongs do not make a right.

        Just because many or some Progressive are promoting Authoritarianism or Tyranny is not a proper justification for Conservatives to promote Authoritarianism or Tyranny–is it?

        Unless Conservatives have, sort of secretly, come to the conclusion that the American, constitutional “experiment in liberty” and self-government really doesn’t work, and so we must return to the older, longer tradition in Western Civilization of having a Monarchy and the One Church together is a unbreakable union. Maybe that’s where Conservatives are at now.

        And maybe Progressives, meanwhile, have secretly decided to return to their older tradition of one-party Communist rule.

        Personally, I hope we can avoid both of there backwards movements, and can instead stick with the way of Constitutional “ordered liberty” given to us by the Founding Fathers.

        Let me thank the people who run Catholic World Report for running and providing such a high quality, faithful Catholic website!

        As the Book of Proverbs says, and as Socrates always said, the fool hates correction, but the wise man seeks out correction. I want to be wise–so, I implore any readers to this to show me my errors. Thank you.

        • Bartolome, You’ve obviously applied your thoughts to this topic for some time. I give you thanks for your input. If you ever need your lawn mowed or your car washed for free, I’m your guy. I recognize my inability to put the pieces together like you have. The one thing that grants me peace in this life as a Christian, though, is that I am to advance Christ and His teachings above everything else. At the end of my days this is the only thing that is going have relevance. Our nation’s forefathers concept of liberty is not my Savior’s teaching on liberty. As such, I will not look to Thomas Jefferson nor James Madison nor John Locke to help me in this arena. Their ideas concerning Natural Law have caused our nation to devolve into the debauchery in which we find ourselves today (ie. our nation’s daughters are exposing themselves on the internet for money to unscrupulous men and our deluded natural law driven courts call it a “right” under the banner of “free speech”). The Christian attempts to advance the gospel, binding other men’s consciences to Christ and the message of the cross, in whatever circle of influence in which he finds himself. In fact, if Amazon were to censor a book a person wrote concerning Jesus and righteousness, Jesus said that person should,”Leap for joy – for great is your reward in heaven.” It is kind of crazy that Christians are surprised that the world hates the righteousness they’re advancing. Jesus was crucified for righteousness sake. Just as the ones who think of themselves as advancing a higher level of liberty in our day by censoring Christians, those who crucified Christ thought they were advancing a higher form of righteousness. Dear Christians – advance the gospel and its true liberty – great will be your reward in heaven – your Lord promises. All other philosophical forms of liberty are a lie.

  6. They don’t want content that implies transgenderism is a mental illness? The APA lists “gender dysphoria” as a mental illness so Amazon is not in contact with reality!

  7. Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Maimonides, Grotius, Hobbes, Pascal, Calvin, Descartes, Spinoza, Malebranche, Milton, Locke, Berkley, Voltaire, Diderot, Hume, Rousseau, Gibbon, Darwin, Kant, Bentham, Balzac, Mill, Hugo, Dumas, Flaubert, Zola, Comte, Joyce, Sartre…Wokism is definitely the new religion of the masses but the idea of mass censorship is not new. I’m so thankful for St. Augustine because when I was growing up as a Baptist they used to tell us kids that the “Index” was evidence that the Catholic Church wanted to keep Catholics ignorant and intellectually, permanently in the Middle Ages. I have confidence that reason is always on the side of Jesus Christ and that all attempts at forced mind control as a false truth will ultimately lose out to the wisdom of the Holy Spirit.

  8. there is no such thing as being born lgbtq…its a CHOICE…a sick one, but a choice non the less…all done for attention and nothing more

  9. Bartolome.
    Your long “comment” ignores the simple obvious issues.
    These internet platforms you defended petitioned congress for a special exemption from liability because they claimed to be a bulletin board and not a publisher. They are not living up to their own claims of neutrality.
    For u to slam rightful criticism is nonsense. Honesty and integrity is something all should strive for and they are lacking in both.

    They should just admit their bias and ask congress to remove the special protections they have.

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