Open Thread Thursday

Quarterly book report. What are you reading?

Stop Silencing Ryan Anderson!

Two days ago Heritage Foundation spokesman Ryan Anderson declared victory over the review "trolls" at Amazon when his new anti-gay book hit #1 in a niche category nobody had ever heard of. But that victory was apparently empty boasting as today the Heritage Foundation itself published a furious reaction to those negative reviews in an article which includes screencaps of comments made here on JMG. The Heritage Foundation and Anderson are particularly furious about one Amazon review which includes a photo from a concentration camp.

We might take Anderson's complaint about the Holocaust photo seriously if he had ever once spoken up about the many, many, many times his conservative colleagues used Nazi imagery and phrases to characterize the LGBT civil rights movement. Visit Breitbart, World Net Daily, BarbWire or virtually any other far right-wing site and you'll find stories illustrated with the rainbow flag overlaid with a swastika, typically with a headline that includes the words "Gaystapo" and "homofascist."  Until Ryan Anderson calls out those websites and writers by name, we'll find it very hard to summon any sympathy for his outrage over anonymous Amazon reviews.

Ryan Anderson: I Beat The Trolls

Ryan Anderson would like you know that despite all those meanies who gave his book poor reviews, he's made it to #1 in the hot-hot-hot Amazon category "Sociology Of Marriage & Family." Also on that yes-there-is-such-a-thing bestsellers list is the riveting sounding 101 Questions To Ask God Before You Get Engaged, which is probably the condensed version of 1001 Questions To Ask Before You Get Married, a book that still appears on that bestsellers list even though it came out over a decade ago. Suck it, trolls!

Brian Brown: Internet Meanies Are Trolling Ryan Anderson's New Anti-Gay Book

"An important new book has been published today that we highly recommend to you. Authored by Ryan Anderson, a great friend of NOM's and a scholar at The Heritage Foundation, the book 'Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom' is a tour-de-force examination of the issues in the marriage debate and an enlightening reflection on what is at stake. Please consider purchasing a copy today. And if you agree with us that the book is extraordinary, please write a favorable review. As you might imagine, the 'haters' among our opponents are busy trolling the Internet to criticize the book because they realize that it is a powerful, principled witness to the truth of preserving marriage as the union of one man and one woman." - Hate group leader Brian Brown, in today's money beg.

Ryan T. Anderson: The Book

The new book by Heritage Foundation spokes-hater Ryan T. Anderson has launched on Amazon. From the product recap:

Attacks on religious liberty--predicated on the bogus equation of opposition to same-sex marriage with racism--have already begun, and modest efforts in Indiana and other states to protect believers' rights have met with hysterics from media and corporate elites. Anderson tells the stories of innocent citizens who have been coerced and penalized by the government and offers a strategy to protect the natural right of religious liberty. Anderson reports on the latest research on same-sex parenting, filling it out with the testimony of children raised by gays and lesbians. He closes with a comprehensive roadmap on how to rebuild a culture of marriage, with work to be done by everyone. The nation's leading defender of marriage in the media and on university campuses, Ryan Anderson has produced the must-read manual on where to go from here. There are reasonable and compelling arguments for the truth about marriage, but too many of our neighbors haven't heard them. Truth is never on "the wrong side of history," but we have to make the case. We will decide which side of history we are on.

We presume that one of the "children raised by gays" is infamous crackpot Robert Oscar Lopez. The book is endorsed by NOM founder Robert George, Southern Baptists leader Russell Moore, and megachurch Pastor Rick Warren. Even though the book just launched today, it's already gotten a couple of gushing five-star reviews. (Tipped by JMG reader Christopher)

Matt Baume: The Book

From the Amazon recap:

Baume provides rare, behind-the-scenes access to personal conflicts around the national struggle. While furious protestors clash on the steps of the Supreme Court, we are ushered inside to witness the same debate playing out amongst the Justices. Readers witness gay political leaders locked in desperate, emotional struggles to pass marriage bills in the back halls of capitols, and are are privy to the conversations of families as they discover what the shifting landscape of marriage means for their own relationships. From decades past to this moment in history, from halls of power to private bedrooms, from the political to the personal, Defining Marriage is the story of how people from all walks of life fought to change marriage -- and how fighting for marriage, in turn, changed them.

The book is free to download this week.

New York Times: Cruz Is Off Bestsellers List Due To "Strategic Bulk Purchases"

Via Politico:

This week, HarperCollins, the book's publisher, sent a letter to The New York Times inquiring about Cruz's omission from the list, sources with knowledge of the situation said. The Times responded by telling HarperCollins that the book did not meet their criteria for inclusion. "We have uniform standards that we apply to our best seller list, which includes an analysis of book sales that goes beyond simply the number of books sold," Times spokesperson Eileen Murphy explained when asked about the omission. "This book didn't meet that standard this week." Asked to specify those standards, Murphy replied: "Our goal is that the list reflect authentic best sellers, so we look at and analyze not just numbers, but patterns of sales for every book." Both HarperCollins and the Cruz campaign declined to comment on the matter.

In an update to the above-linked the story, the Times spokesman adds: "In the case of this book, the overwhelming preponderance of evidence was that sales were limited to strategic bulk purchases." Such bulk purchases have long been used to buy one's way onto the list.

"Stop My Abortion" Site Was A Hoax

Via the Friendly Atheist:

Remember the anonymous woman who said she would go ahead with her planned abortion unless pro-lifers raised $1 million (which she said would be put in a trust fund for the child)? Turns out it was a hoax. A great big publicity stunt. The website ProLifeAntiWoman.com no longer has the woman’s plea. It’s now a website promoting the novel Strange Animals by Chad Kultgen. (The text that went viral was an excerpt from the book, it says.) The campaign may have backfired, though. The book was just released today by publishers Harper Perennial, and every review on Amazon so far has given it a 1-star rating.

Some of you called this.

LIST: America's Most Well-Read Cities

Via Business Wire:

Amazon.com today announced its fifth annual list of the Most Well-Read Cities in America – just in time for summer reading season. The ranking was determined by compiling sales data of all book, magazine and newspaper sales in both print and Kindle format from April 2014 to April 2015, on a per capita basis in cities with more than 500,000 residents. Seattle, Wash., the home of Amazon headquarters, not only purchased the most books overall but also purchased the most Kindle books, magazines, and newspapers. Washington, D.C. residents, ranked #5 overall on the list, prefer the print book, outranking Seattle as the city with the most purchases of print books. California is for readers with three cities making the top 20 list this year: San Francisco, San Diego, and San Jose.

The most-purchased book in seven of the above cities was Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.

Former Escort Service Owner Pens Tell-All: Sen. Larry Craig Liked His Hookers Butch

Former DC escort service owner Henry Vinson pleaded guilty to federal racketeering charges back in 1990 and served five years in a minimum security prison. Twenty years later he's penned a tell-all memoir in which he claims that then-Rep. Larry Craig preferred that his rent boys be "quite masculine."

Vinson employed up to 20 escorts on a given night in this “extremely lucrative” business. “The business was very successful.” Not wanting to pin down a number to his profits, Vinson did mention a frequent customer who would spend $20,000 a month on his escorts. “Of course, in the ’80s that was a lot of money.” Rich in the kind of sordid drama one might expect, Vinson’s book names names. Then-U.S. Rep. Larry Craig of Idaho, he writes, “became a frequent flier of my escort service” and “preferred escorts who were quite masculine.” Although he claims he received many threats of blackmail from many of his powerful clients, Vinson’s business was in full operation until the Secret Service raided his home, his sister’s home and his mother’s home in 1989. And the rest is history.

As you surely recall, in 2007 Larry Craig was busted for soliciting in the men's room of the Minneapolis airport. He did not seek reelection to the Senate in 2008 and is now a lobbyist for the oil industry. Last year Craig was ordered to repay over $240K in campaign funds that he had used in his soliciting defense. (Tipped by JMG reader Javier)

RELATED: Last month Henry Vinson penned an essay for the Advocate in which he mentions that his RICO defense attorney was current Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren. According to Vinson, Van Susteren failed in her attempt to force the government to release the full list of his clients.

Lambda Literary Awards: June 1st In NYC

John Waters and Rita Mae Brown will be honored at the 2015 Lambda Literary Awards in Manhattan on June 1st. On the list of attendees: Gloria Steinem, Liz Smith, Michelangelo Signorile, Janet Mock, Alan Cumming, Justin Bond, Susie Bright, and many others. Get tickets here.

Here Are The Winners Of Signorile's Book

Michelangelo Signorile's latest book It's Not Over goes on sale nationwide today. The publisher provided us with three copies to give away and the winners of last week's swag contest are JMG readers TimCA, Mike In Texas, and David Milley. The winners were selected using a random number generator and have been notified via Disqus.

Special Swag: Mike Signorile's New Book

Michelangelo Signorile's latest book, It's Not Over, goes on sale nationwide on Tuesday and we've got three copies to give away to JMG readers. From the Amazon description:

Marriage equality has surged across the country. Closet doors have burst open in business, entertainment, and even major league sports. But Michelangelo Signorile argues in his most provocative book yet, the excitement of such breathless change makes this moment more dangerous than ever. Puncturing the illusion that victory is now inevitable, Signorile marshals stinging evidence that an age-old hatred, homophobia, is still a basic fact of American life. He exposes the bigotry of the brewing religious conservative backlash against LGBT rights and challenges the complacency and hypocrisy of supposed allies in Washington, the media, and Hollywood.Not just a wake-up call, It's Not Over is also a battle plan for the fights to come in the march toward equality.

Journalist Glenn Greenwald raves:

For 25 years, Michelangelo Signorile has been one of America's most incisive critics and influential activists in the movement for gay equality, and It’s Not Over demonstrates he is better than ever. The new book is a penetrating look at one of the great social movements of our time and the challenges that lay before it. With detailed reporting and razor-sharp analysis, Signorile exposes the dangerous triumphalism that has taken hold. He reveals the bigotry and bias still deeply embedded in the media, the political establishment, and throughout American culture. And he provides an illuminating, stirring plan of action to vanquish it.

Enter to win It's Not Over by commenting on this post. You can either leave an email address that you check frequently or I can respond to your comment with the notice of your win. (You'll need to check your Disqus notifications.) Winners are chosen by using a random number generator. Entries close at midnight on Monday and I'll post the names of the winners on Tuesday when the book launches.

J.K. Rowling On Dumbledore Being Gay

Meet The Bears Of Sweet Paul

The foodies among you may already be familiar with Sweet Paul, which began years ago as Paul Lowe's personal cooking blog and has since grown to become a wildly popular print and online magazine. Lowe (above left, also known as "the gay Martha Stewart") does the kitchen work while the business side of the enterprise is handled by "the other Paul" - my longtime pal Paul Vitale. The fifth anniversary issue of Sweet Paul launches next week and I'm just the worst friend ever not to have mentioned them before now. And hey, they've even put out a well-received cookbook, Sweet Paul: Eat & Make. Join their 70,000 fans on Facebook.

Quote Of The Day - Alex Malarkey

"Please forgive the brevity, but because of my limitations I have to keep this short. I did not die. I did not go to heaven. I said I went to heaven because I thought it would get me attention. When I made the claims that I did, I had never read the Bible. People have profited from lies, and continue to. They should read the Bible, which is enough. The Bible is the only source of truth. Anything written by man cannot be infallible. I want the whole world to know that the Bible is sufficient. Those who market these materials must be called to repent and hold the Bible as enough." - Alex Malarkey, 10 year-old quadriplegic, in an open letter to Christian bookstores asking that they stop selling his hit book.

From the website Pulpit & Pen:

This will be welcome news to many concerned Christians who have for years lobbied both of these organizations to stop profiting from the sale of “Heavenly Tourism” books, supposed “true stories” of people (often young children) visiting heaven and coming back to tell about it, which inevitably become best sellers. One of the main criticisms of these books, of which there are many, is the frequency with which they out-rightly contradict each other, regaling the reader with diametrically opposing details on the afterlife, including details of who will be there, what Jesus looks like, and the like. A simple example would be that in Colton Burpos’ book Heaven is for Real, readers are told that everyone in heaven has wings. Don Piper’s book 90 Minutes in Heaven makes no mention of wings on the residents of heaven. (Note: the Bible indicates that the residents of heaven, before the resurrection of the saints, do not have bodies. It’s unclear why people with without bodies would need wings.)

Malarkey's retraction is headline news across the Christian blogosphere and accusations are flying that the book's publisher and the president of the nation's largest Christian bookstore chain knew that the boy's story was false.

Open Thread Thursday

Quarterly book report time. What are you reading?

Double-Dicked Dude Writes A Book

Last year the man who reportedly has two ten-inch fully functional penises earned global headlines after he participated in an "Ask Me Anything" thread on Reddit where he revealed having had sex with hundreds of men and women. Now he's written a book. From the Amazon description:

He was featured on the front pages of RollingStone.com, Jezebel.com and was covered by The Huffington Post. Both Conan O'Brien and Jay Leno featured him in their opening monologues. Countless news agencies around the world broke the story when he went on Reddit and did an Ask Me Anything (AMA). Ranking as the 4th most popular Reddit AMA of all time (beating out the likes of Peter Dinklage, Bill Murray, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Harrison Ford), DoubleDickDude spent 48 hours discussing his life with a genetic condition known as diphallia. Only 1 in 5.5 million males worldwide are born with two penises. However very few (if any) are born with two working, and by all accounts, attractive penises. After having managed to stay under the radar for over 20 years DoubleDickDude (or DDD for short) amassed thousands of followers on Twitter and Tumblr in a matter of hours. In fact Twitter (temporarily) suspended his account for replying to his followers too many times! For the past year he has taken to writing a more lengthy and detailed account of his life so far. Very little could be detailed during a frenzy of questions from thousands on Reddit. DDD goes from discussing his childhood, and explains how he knew he was special at an early age. His parents support grounded him in his early youth. We find out how he lost his virginity and was exposed to his peers. From there he discusses his wild streak of sexual adventures fresh out of high school. Recapping his favorite questions and answers, discussing sexuality and acceptance DDD covers the gamut.

A rather startling (and obviously not work-safe) photo is here, but you may have to be logged into Twitter to view it.

New Book Compiles Religious Hate Mail

Bonnie Weinstein, wife of Military Religious Freedom Foundation head Mikey Weinstein, has published a compilation of the hate mail her family has received. Via Salon:

As hard as it was to read in places, it’s important to read and understand. It offers an unflinching examination of a subset of American fundamentalism, created by a segment of our society that is whiter, more conservative and a lot angrier than the rest of America. For some people the future of their faith and of the nation are in danger, threatened by secular forces controlled by Satan himself. This existential threat to Christian supremacy justifies the most offensive, vulgar and cruel letters I’ve ever read. Think I’m overstating it? Read the book. [snip]  I will spare you, dear reader, actual excerpts from the book. Instead I will summarize almost every letter: The MRFF hates America, Weinstein is a dirty Jew who deserves to be raped / murdered / skull-fucked, some truly awful sexual filth directed at Bonnie, fuck-shit-fuck, cocksucker, and Jesus is Lord. Frankly, I’m downplaying it a lot. Bonnie adds commentary and worked with an artist to create some fun illustrations to give the book structure, and the letters get worse as toward the end of a book, reflecting real life. As the MRFF has racked up success pushing back against the creation of a Christian army — also outlined at the very end of the book — the letters the MRFF receives have gotten angrier and meaner.

The MRFF, about whom I've written many times over the years, works to thwart Christian dominionism in the ranks of the US military. Weinstein's book went on sale today. (Tipped by JMG reader Str8 Grandmother)

Open Thread Thursday

Quarterly book report time. What are you reading?