A SEARCH FOR the word “lesbian” on Amazon.com’s Web site turns up all sorts of engaging books to snuggle up with, from The Art of Meeting Women to The Lesbian Sex Book. There are even videos on Forbidden Love or Growing Up Gay & Lesbian—a huge selection, in other words, that makes it seem Amazon.com likes lesbians and is actively courting their business.
God forbid you should be lesbian and sue the company, however; then you find out how Amazon.com really feels. In grueling pretrial depositions that have lasted up to eight hours, the company’s attorneys have been demanding some queer details of the five women who own Minneapolis’s Amazon Bookstore, a 29-year-old feminist co-op that filed a lawsuit in April to stop Amazon.com from using its name. In a court filing first reported in Seattle’s Washington Journal, the questions read as pure McCarthyism: Are you now or have you ever been a lesbian?
A deposition taken September 22 from co-owner Johanna den Boer is one of two that led the bookstore’s lawyer, Mathias Samuel, to file a motion on October 7 asking Minnesota’s US District Court to halt inquiries into sexual orientation. At one point in the interview, Amazon.com attorney Paul Weller asked den Boer if she had any interest in promoting lesbian ideals in the community. When den Boer asked what he meant, Weller honed in: “I’ll ask you this, are you gay?”
Samuel objected and den Boer refused to answer. But that didn’t stop Weller from persisting: “Do you know if any of the women at the bookstore [are] married to a woman?”
Den Boer: “It’s not legal to be married to a woman.”
Weller: “Do they have partners?”
Den Boer: “I’m not going to answer that.”
Samuel: “Counsel, this is a slippery slope.”
Weller: “Do you know?”
Den Boer: “I’m not going to answer.”
Weller couldn’t be reached for comment, so that unenviable task was left to Amazon.com spokesperson Bill Curry, who noted that “at first blush” the questions look bad. Bookstore attorney Samuel claims in his motion that it’s harassment meant to “embarrass or oppress a witness.” “This case is about who was using the name Amazon to sell books first, not about who’s sleeping with whom,” Samuel also says. “The fact they’re attempting to ask these questions is outrageous and shows the fundamental weakness of their case.”
Not so, says Curry, who explained that Amazon.com needs the information to show that the store owners and their Web site have been trying to “change their stripes” from a lesbian-oriented specialty shop to a mainstream merchandiser like Amazon.com. “As part of the litigation,” he says, “we are trying to get them to confirm their original statements about who owned and operated the store, and what their context was.”
The ultimate goal is to prove that customers couldn’t possibly confuse the two entities—an argument of trademark law that may save the company’s bacon, but makes its attorneys look like pigs.
