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10/10/2014
@AustinRuse defames me, pretends to know heart of gay teen (cc @CrisisMag)
Even after the conservative Public Discourse ran an apology and correction separating my commentary writing from others who have chosen to write people's employers, target their family members, call for their firing, etc., Austin Ruse, the very anti-LGBT activist who works for C-FAM, has written yet another piece linking me to actions I never performed. Here are some pertinent snippets:
Jeremy Hooper, who works with the thugs at GLAAD, runs a site called “Good as You,” went after Janna but the real action was in the comment section.
...
One must believe that the likes of Jeremy Hooper and Scott Rose and all the nasties in the comment boxes are far from representative of gay culture. One hopes so. We look forward to the day when Hooper-Rose et al are ostracized for their behavior.
FULL: Real Victims of the Gay Bullyboys [Crisis Mag]
Okay, for starters, I never went after Janna Darnelle; I just publicly responded to the points that she raised in her public commentary. She wrote a piece disparagaing gay families and demanding that gay people should essentially not be gay, and I, a married gay father who works as a political commentator, opined with my countering opinion. That is what I do; that is what discourse is.
But I, to this moment, still don't know "Janna Darnelle's" real name, I haven't so much as tried to find her public Facebook page, I never had even the first instinct to reach out to her, her employer, or her family. Her ex-husband chose, on his own accord, to leave a comment on my site. But I kept my own thoughts limited to the information that she herself chose to write on the internet as a means of political commentary.
And I do not work or in any way conspire with Scott Rose. I've never met Scott Rose. Scott Rose comments on here from time to time, yes. Scott Rose also knows, because I have directly told him and because he reads my work, that his approach to things is not my approach to things. I think he would be the first to admit this. Just because I run an open comments forum in which virtually no one sees his or her opinion moderated away (except in rare occasions that people bring to my attention) doesn't give anyone the right to link commenters' opinions and actions with my own. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act makes it very clear that a content creator like myself cannot be held accountable for content he or she did not create (e.g. web forum comments)!! To be frank, I only even see about 1/3 of the comments, at best, since I am a full-time parent of a one-year-old with little time to spare.
And then Ruse writes this about the supposed "Rivka Edelman," the person who dragged my name into this mix when she wrote a defamatory article making the same attempted links as Ruse, for which Public Discourse has publicly apologized to me:
Guess what happened to Rivka Edelman? They tried to crush her. They say they have found out her identity. Maybe. Maybe not. How they do this is remarkable and frightening, and they want us frightened though it is far from clear that they have found out her identity. After all, the sexual anarchists are known to tell a fib or two.
Let’s say they found out someone’s identity and, like Janna, they want to get her fired. They have dug up some aggressive comments she is supposed to have made in various comment boxes about gays and transgenders in order to show what a vicious bigot she is and how she should be punished for it. They want her. Oh do they want her. The comment boxes are full of vulgar attacks that I cannot and will not repeat.
These women are not only victims in their person lives; one was left by her husband for another man and a lesbian raised the other; they are victims here by the gay bullyboys simply for telling their personal stories.
FULL: Real Victims of the Gay Bullyboys [Crisis Mag]
Okay, let's start with the "finding her" part. Mr. Ruse might be interested to know that B.A. Newmark-Klein, the pseudonymous "Rivka Edelman," filed a very nasty amicus brief in an appeals court in which she made some really gross claims about same-sex unions and same-sex parenting. In that brief, she revealed her identity and noted that she writes as "Rivka Edelman." These are all public actions. She, a public thinker and someone who is trying to shape public policy, chose to enter into this arena. So spare me this whole "found her out" thing.
And no, there was no "trying to crush her," at least by me. Just as with Janna, I never wrote one of Ms. Newmark's family members, never attempted to contact her employer, etc. I did send her a Facebook friend request because I thought the two of us should talk directly to each other rather than across one another. But that never came to fruition.
What I did do is show the world how this same person who had accused me of some sort of nasty online behavior has herself made it a personal mission to fill the internet with truly nasty comments that attack people—transgender individuals and the entire category of men, essentially—on a very personal level. Again, these are Ms. Newmark's own words. She wrote them in public forums. Her own public profile listed her name. If someone makes a public comment on the internet, that is 100%, in every way, non-debatable fair game!! All I did was highlight these comments. And I even said that I didn't need to say anything further about them; I am more than willing to let her words do their own talking.
But these distinctions don't matter to Mr. Ruse. He literally said that I, someone who doesn't so much as call people "bigots" or "haters" and who has made it a point to reach out and have real conversations with the opposition, deserve to be ostracized for the behavior that he concocted for me. That is some low, dirty, bush league nastiness he just laid at my feet!
But wait, there's more! In this same article he also writes the following about the teenage son of "Janna Darnelle" and her gay ex-husband:
In fact, among the first commenters was the pseudonymous Janna’s husband who promptly told everyone her full name, all the better to stalk her with. He did more than that, he published a photo of him with his lover and his children, obviously at some LGBT event because in the background are other gay men with their lovers lounging on the grass.
When you look at the picture, I think you can see pain in the eyes of their son. He seems embarrassed to be there with his father and his father’s lover and all the gay men around. The girl seems happy enough, she’s smiling.
Jesus! This is a teenage boy. A minor. And yet Mr. Ruse, in an article where he purports to decry "bullying," puts this "pain" on this kid's heart? He thinks it's perfectly okay to accuse a minor child of being "embarrassed" of his father?
Yikes. Yet again I'm more than willing to let Mr. Ruse's words here stand for themselves. I need not say any more about them.
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