Walmart to stop selling racy magazines

Walmart to stop selling racy magazines

NASHVILLE — Wal-Mart has pulled three magazines from its shelves following customer complaints about their racy covers and content. The nation’s largest retailer will no longer be selling Stuff, Maxim and FHM — three magazines many pro-family groups believe border on pornography.

The decision came after “listening to our customers and associates,” Wal-Mart spokeswoman Melissa Berryhill told The New York Times. “I know we’ve heard from at least one of those magazines, they weren’t pleased with the offering.”

Wal-Mart has been under pressure from Christian groups to remove the magazines, the newspaper reported. The Timothy Plan, a pro-family mutual funds management firm, has been pressuring Wal-Mart either to remove Cosmopolitan magazines from checkout lanes or “cover” the often racy covers. Its president, Arthur Ally, said magazines like Stuff, Maxim and FHM can serve as a portal to other forms of pornography. “They are extremely important,” Dan Capell of Capell’s Circulation Report, a newsletter about magazine circulation, told the Times. “They are the largest retailers of magazines and probably the fastest growing.” (TAB)