From Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/oscar-raymundo/gay-bookstores_b_1188197.html
1/9/12
Not many places in the world can be considered gay landmarks, but certainly LGBT bookstores have played a big part in cultivating our history, serving as resource centers for queer and questioning youth and fostering relationships in gayborhoods beyond one-night stands and drunken blackouts.
Unfortunately, when it comes to making ends meet, these independent bookstores are barely hanging on by a thread.
Earlier this week Queerty wrote about Glad Day Bookshop in Toronto going up for sale. Currently the oldest gay bookstore in the world, Glad Day has been a beacon of freedom of expression for over 31 years. In 2003 the bookshop won a federal lawsuit defending their right to sell movies, adult or otherwise, without the approval of the Ontario Film Review Board. (You can help save Glad Day by shopping online.)
But despite these strides, LGBT bookstores worldwide continue to struggle against online retailers. Ironically it was the biggest online retailer of them all, Amazon.com, that once classified gay and lesbian titles as "adult" material. Books with LGBT content, including Brokeback Mountain and an Ellen DeGeneres biography, were stripped of their rankings in what was later corrected as a "technical glitch."
That all happened in 2009, the same year New York's Oscar Wilde Bookshop, D.C.'s Lambda Rising, and West Hollywood's A Different Light announced they were going under.
Continue reading at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/oscar-raymundo/gay-bookstores_b_1188197.html
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