Enemies of sexual freedom strike again!

Via InstaPundit, I see more confirmation of what I’ve been warning about for some time: war on gay conservatives [and non-conforming gays generally].
Thanks to the efforts of two noted practitioners of a form of stalking they euphemistically call “outing,” GayPatriot (who started his blog to oppose such tactics) has quit blogging — apparently to save his job. (Fortunately, the blog is being continued by GayPatriotWest.)
Getting someone fired is the lowest form of sleazy backstabbing I can think of. Going after someone’s job is analogous to robbery, because it takes away someone’s living. If anything should be a crime, it’s that.
From what I can determine, GayPatriot’s crime was to call these tactics a form of terrorism. If someone makes enough trouble that you lose your job, it might not be terrorism in the legal sense, but is it terrorism in the moral sense?
Let’s see how my dictionary defines “terrorist” . . .

terrorist: 1. One who favors or practices terrorism; one who administers or coerces a government or community by intimidation…..
Webster’s New International Dictionary (Second Ed., 1958)

Without getting into the question of favoring terrorism, I think it’s fair to ask whether threatening to have someone fired constitutes intimidation.
There’s a lot of it going around.
There’ll be a lot more too.
UPDATE (03/29/05): Michael Demmons had this email exchange with Gay Patriot:

According to GayPatriot, whom I had an email exchange with following Rogers? pseudopsychopathic episode, here?s what happened:

He had somehow found out who I am and called my employer. He terrorized my secretary and threatened to call the police, FBI and sue my company as well as threatened a nationwide boycott of my company?s products. My secretary was scared to death and was shaking in fear.

If a terrorist is one who terrorizes, the Mike Rogers is one of them. That?s his job – to make gay conservatives so fearful of being outed that they will do anything he asks. Mike Rogers called GayPatriot?s employer because of a blog posting. If Rogers was actually concerned about his own safety – a ludicrous claim – he would have made his first call to the police. That wasn?t his concern though. His concern was intimidation, and what better way to intimidate someone into silence than to go through the trouble of finding out his employer?s name, and then start making harrassing, theatening phone calls.
You spend your life terrorizing and intimidating people into doing what you want, and you wonder why someone calls you a terrorist?
Mike Rogers is a petty man, and I am glad to see how much he is being called out by some of the larger blogs for this act of complete immaturity.

Trying to get someone fired for his opinions crosses a line which should never be crossed. I’m glad to see people speaking up, as this sort of thing shouldn’t have to be tolerated anywhere.


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One response to “Enemies of sexual freedom strike again!”

  1. B. Durbin Avatar

    Unfortunately, this is not a new tactic. We had a friend who preferred to be pseudonymous on Usenet because of threats against his job and person? and those threats were usually over threads on *television shows*.
    Admittedly, he did have a tendency to call certain people “cretins” but only after they had demonstrated cretinous behavior, usually through trolling.