Amazon to stop selling disputed cockfighting magazines

It may be a little harder for "chicken aficionados" to get their hands on the Gamecock and the Feathered Warrior, both the subject of a federal animal cruelty lawsuit that was settled this week when the magazines' publisher agreed to ask Amazon.com to stop selling its publications online, the Associated Press reports.

In 2006, the Humane Society of the United States asked the U.S. Postal Service to stop delivering the magazines. Humane Society President Wayne Pacelle, pictured at right with the magazines in question, explained in a San Francisco Chronicle op-ed piece last year that the group also began fighting with Amazon because it was trafficking materials that "incite cockfighting."

Amazon has argued that it has a constitutional right to sell the publications and called pulling them from sale a form of censorship, according to the AP.

The Humane Society last year sued Amazon demanding the online retailer stop selling the Gamecock, which the group called "the oldest and best-known cockfighting magazine in the United States." An attorney for the Marburger Publishing Co. described the magazine much differently, saying it was appealing to "chicken aficionados."

-- Tony Barboza

Photo: Robert A. Reeder / Washington Post