We've used Amazon Associate's rather lovely API for years now to provide an online book store on this web site. Yes, I know that Amazon has had a history of fairly right-leaning political contributions, but the fact that they are the only book provider giving us a straightforward way to implement this was an overwhelming consideration. I'll for the moment ignore how few of you have ever actually bought any of these recommended books from the site.
However - Amazon has recently apparently set a policy of manipulating their sales records to demote the sales ranking of any books they consider "adult" in nature. This has primarily affected the rankings of gay-themed books, but has also dropped the sales ranks of multiple hetero books, including Lady Chatterly's Lover. Mind you, they still sell all these books, they've just made it impossible for any of them to appear to be selling well, and therefore are discouraging people from finding them in searches and discouraging people from buying them. At the moment, Amazon is apparently calling this policy change a "mistake" that they are going to correct.
We've removed the Amazon Associates links and application from the web site. We won't restore them until Amazon publicly reverses this policy. You might be interested in joining us in signing the position protesting this policy .