Angus & Robertson apologise as retailers draw fire for selling pro-conversion therapy books
Booksellers Angus & Robertson have issued an apology after it was reported they were allowing the sale of books promoting conversion therapy.
Tony Nash, the CEO of Angus & Robertson’s parent company Booktopia, said there will be an immediate stocktake to identify titles promoting the widely discredited and harmful practice of conversion therapy, also known as sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE), 7NEWS reported.
The move comes after a Change.org petition last month helped pressure Amazon to remove conversion therapy titles by a major figure in the movement, Joseph Nicolosi, from sale in the US.
Amazon’s Australian arm has reportedly taken the titles down after being approached for comment over their local availability.
As at time of publication, Nicolosi’s books are still present on the Angus & Robertson website but are no longer manually searchable on the website.
An Equality Australia petition is calling on booksellers to remove the titles immediately, with hundreds having added their names to the call.
“Nicolosi’s books have been used to justify these ‘therapies’ in Australia and caused direct harm to people here,” the petition states.
Nash said that the books are “absolutely deplorable” and their sale through Angus & Robertson is “not acceptable for us.”
“We will do anything we can to support all people from all backgrounds just trying to live a normal life,” he said.
Another Australian bookseller, Dymocks, still has Nicolosi’s titles and other conversion therapy texts available for sale, though at significant cost.
Nash said that self-publishing has made filtering out harmful titles far more difficult, and the algorithms that are designed to catch dangerous content don’t always work.
“We’re curating all the time, we’re getting rid of the rubbish, but there are 27 million active books in the world and there’s 4,000 new ones being written every day.”
Dymocks is still allowing the sale of titles like Homosexuality: Dispel the Myth, Mend the Broken Pieces and The Sin of Homosexuality, but also promotes the sale of books written from Christian perspectives promoting the acceptance of LGBTI people.
Penguin Random House still promotes the sale of an ex-gay book written by Alan Medinger, the original executive director of Exodus International, and endorsed by Nicolosi which is published by one of its imprints.
The title is still listed as available by a number of outlets in Australia including Dymocks, Angus & Robertson, QBD, and is listed on the Readings website but is out of stock.
Writing for the Star Observer in February, SOCE survivors Chris Csabs and Nathan Despott wrote about Australia’s potential to lead the world in elimination conversion therapy.
“As survivors, we want Australians to know it is not just the practice of conversion therapy that is harmful, but that much of the damage is done by the ideology that underpins the pseudo-therapies,” they wrote.
“The extent to which this ideology of ‘brokenness’ proliferates in Australia’s evangelical churches cannot be overstated.”
In April, the federal Labor Party pledged to outlaw conversion therapy practices in Australia ahead of the election.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said that banning conversion therapy wasn’t a priority because he was focused on “on the things we actually have control over”.
The Star Observer has reached out to Dymocks Australia, QBD and Penguin Random House for comment.
Aren’t we looking at a number of issues here?
Yes, GCT is totally abhorrent, it is sadistic and the practice should be made a Criminal Offence – unfortunately under the current Federal Government – which has leaders and members who are also members of Pentecostal, Baptist and other similar ultra-conservative, self-styled ‘Christian’ sects – none of which know the first thing about what it is to be a real Christian – there will be no changes brought in to ban the practice and make it a Crime. Unfortunately we cannot expect any help from the Federal Opposition either as so many of them are tied up with the corrupt, paedophile-protecting Roman Catholic Church.
Then there is the issue of people’s Rights to Freedom of Speech, to Read whatever they want to.
Of course booksellers such as Angus & Robertson, Dymocks, Penguin, Random House are only in it for the money and they don’t care how they make it so long as they do. Those books can’t be banned because immediately there would be legitimate cries of ‘Censorship’, the introduction of the Roman Catholic Church’s list of banned books.
Booksellers can simply refuse to stock them or make them an –
On Order Only item and then charge the purchasers an arm and a leg for them!
Scott Morrison is a prick and not a nice one!