Double standards

First, a link. Elisa Rolle, who's a pretty well-known blogger who discusses and reviews gay fiction and film, is having an Excerpt Weekend in which she posts blurbs and excerpts to upcoming books. I sent her an excerpt of "Zero at the Bone" and it's been posted today:

http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/547874.html

Second, something a little sad.

I've been planning my book release party for awhile now and so far everything's been going really great. I've made a lot of contacts and everyone's been happy to help. I've already gotten some food donated from a local restaurant and I was out trolling for more. I emailed a local Whole Foods. The marketing person emailed me back and said they'd be very interested in participating, how many people did I expect, what time did it need to be ready, etc etc. And could I send her more information about the event and the book, which I did.

Then she emailed me informing me that they couldn't participate because of the "graphic nature" of the book. Huh. I don't know where she got "graphic nature" because the info I sent her was from the Facebook event I did for the release date and it doesn't say that anywhere.

It's unpleasant to think of but I have to wonder if she'd object to sexual content between a man and a woman. Lord knows there are plenty of mainstream literary novels which contain plenty of strong sexual content. "Tropic of Cancer," anyone? Does Zero's categorization as "gay fiction" earn it a different set of rules as to how much sexual content is acceptable? It's no steamier than the racier lines of Harlequin romances, which they sell in grocery stores, for Pete's sake.

I was nice about it but I did point that fact out. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but if there is a double standard at work here, that's a disappointing attitude from a company like Whole Foods.