She moved to Seattle about five years ago, but it wasn’t until 2009 that I first noticed her. She was giving hell to a man named Gary Randall, president of the Faith and Freedom Network, who was drumming up an anti-gay campaign in Washington State. She outed his finances. She outed his associates. She outed his history of mounting homophobic campaigns while paying himself a lavish salary.
The hits kept coming. Blogging under the pseudonym “Lurleen” at Pam’s House Blend, she screamed bloody murder when backers of an anti-gay referendum reported only their donors’ initials, instead of the full names required by state disclosure rules. She went to their anti-gay rallies, took photos, blogged it all.
“I was pretty sure that the opposition was reading what I was writing,” Lurleen says, explaining her decision not to write under her real name online. “I decided early on to use a pseudonym or pen name, because I wanted to feel out the territory first.”
In midsummer 2009, when a battle over domestic-partnership rights was raging in Washington, Randall linked to a list of gay politicians on a blog that advised readers to use the list “first as a precursor for additional investigation before taking ‘direct action.’ ;-)”
“This was sort of like skinhead territory,” Lurleen reflects. “If he thought it was okay to link to something like that, I felt that maybe I had made a wise decision to keep my identity quiet. Nobody else was poking the opposition daily like I was.”
She succeeded in keeping her identity secret for years, until recently. On January 19, Randall hit back against his nemesis, writing on his blog: “‘Lurleen’ is Laurel Ramseyer.”
How did he find her real name? It wasn’t with help from like-minded agitators on the right. Instead, it was with help from gay and transgender bloggers, who revealed Lurleen’s identity earlier this year. Leading the charge: transgender activist Katrina Rose, who announced on ENDAblog, “I’m outing her here as having committed an egregious act of transphobic cyber-bullying…”
The “egregious act”?
Ramseyer once deleted the profile of a commenter who alluded to her true identity in a comment thread on Pam’s House Blend, wiping that commenter’s entire history off the website. Ramseyer says it was an accident—she was just trying to delete the one comment.
But the bigger, underlying motivation seems to be a belief that Ramseyer was complicit in a massive gay conspiracy.
“Gay Inc.,” as some LGBT bloggers call it, is ostensibly a well-heeled national network willing to fight for marriage rights for homosexuals while leaving behind—and even rejecting—equal rights for transgender people. Rose wrote that people involved with “Gay Inc.” are willing to “bypass trans equality and move on to the non-trans issue of gay marriage.”
And what, allegedly, links Ramseyer to “Gay Inc.”?
In addition to her blogging, Ramseyer had been volunteering for Equal Rights Washington (ERW), a statewide LGBT equality group that was working to uphold the domestic-partnership law (it successfully defeated Randall’s anti-gay campaign in November 2009). After that win, Ramseyer became ERW’s volunteer new-media director. This, apparently, made her a tool.
Regardless of whether it was paranoid conspiracy theories or long-standing grudges that motivated her outing, being exposed was probably inevitable, says Kelly McBride, a senior faculty member of the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank. “The hacking community can almost always figure out who you are,” McBride says. “There are some people who have valuable contributions who need to be anonymous, but I see most people abusing anonymity to just be mean.”
In this case, though, Ramseyer wasn’t using internet anonymity in order to be mean. She was using it in order to protect herself while she aggressively fought for gay rights. “I never in my wildest dreams expected a small group of people in the LGBT community to do something nasty to me,” Ramseyer says. “I always expected it to come from the opposition.” 
I know who Responsible Doc is, here’s a photo: http://i811.photobucket.com/albums/zz31/…
Katrina Rose is bringing in more anti-gay friends, joyyyyyy.
What? I got up in the morning looking forward to more petulance and emotional egocentrism, and only a few posts. What gives? Come on, guys. Slog is the perfect place to give the Big Gay Conspiracy that what-for. And to argue about who dissed who first. Your audience awaits!
Kathy Padilla DID NOT screw up and I say or write this as someone who is not e-mail friendly with Lurleen, the baristas of Pam’s House Blend, Kathy Padilla, mzmartipants, Tom Lang, or the editor/writer of this farce of a news column.
Ms. Padilla asked a perfectly valid question of someone who purported themselves part of the LGBT leadership.
Rather than being accountable and transparent, instead she threatened those activists, and deceived other activists who were asked to intervene and sweep this whole issue back into the closet.
One they realized they were lied to, that’s when this whole thing blew up.
Unless my timeline is off, this is when Tom Lang of Know Thy Neighbor came into the picture and revealed that Lurleen was interfering with his efforts which included exposing hypocrites and uncovering fraud in signature collecting anti-equality petitions.
If there’s anyone lacking credibility, it would be Lurleen, Autumn Sandeen, and of course, Pam Spaulding, since all this is occurring within her name and apparently her blessings.
Womyn2me:
I find it very interesting that you claim that trans people stab gays in the back when we assert or advocate our priorities or question the wisdom of going all-out for gay marriage. But then you say that you quit reading PHB because it had too much trans content, and you’re not interested
How can you, in good faith, ask trans people to care about your issues when you admit that you don’t care for our even enough to read a blog that has a little content about trans issues*?
And I’m someone who identifies as both trans and queer, I’ve got stock in both issues. However, the daily discrimination and hurdles I face. Marriage is nice and all, but marriage doesn’t count for much when you’re facing being out on the streets because no one will hire you because of who you are.
*1 out of 9, if even that, posts at PHB are on trans stuff.
The lie inherent to this entire argument is that activists are going “all-out” for marriage. It assumes several things, including inaction on other issues and ignorance or disdain for other issues.
“Well, you can’t do THAT because there’s THIS issue to worry about, and you can’t do THAT because it doesn’t effect ME!”
Oh, okay. Basically you’re a self-important asshole that wants to shame people instead of working for a greater good.
Don’t trans people already have some degree of marriage equality?
The more I hear from trans activists in this thread, the less I want them part of our movement.
Is that really your intention,T-folks????
@ texmas, yes but only minimally. It depends on the state and how marriage or its equivalent is defined. Also, how the state views by law trans people, drivers license changes matching laws etc
And let’s not forget that if you are a transgender or transsexual person that you still have a sexual orientation that is not related to you being trans. So society and the laws of each state may not coincide.
There is a dire need for BASIC rights for LGBT people. Only in 12 states are there protections that cover employment, housing, public accomodations for LGBT people. This whole issue of this Lurleen planted via Holden started and was caused by transgender activists asking Lurleen what her connection was to the greater LGBT political movement. In a nut shell, trans people have been put on a back burner and now that the LGB are making broad steps forward, again it seems basic rights for and inclusion of trans people are being delayed and incrementally moved forward. In MD, the hot button issure right now, EQMD included LGBT in a non-discrimination bill for housing and employment, but only put LGB’s in for public accomodation protections. So if you are transgender or transsexual, you will not be able to be safe from discrimination, in other words possibly thrown out, of your own daughter’s school play, a clothing store (dressing room or not), a movie theatre, restrooms, etc etc. LGB’s will be protected from that in the new bill if it passes.
Actual many post transsexual women are lesbian and many post-transsexual men are gay. That means our marriage concerns are the same as assigned female at birth lesbians or assigned male at birth gay men.
One big split in the loudly touted “transgender community” is between those who identify as transgender and those who identify the sex they have been surgically reassigned to.
Many post-operative women want nothing to do with transgender and if we are lesbian our concerns are more in line with other lesbians than with the TG community.
Contrary to popular thought this does not require us to hate members of the transgender community or to oppose full rights for members of that community but does mean our primary concerns are often else where.
As for straight post-SRS folks, they often wan nothing to do with any groups in the alphabet soup.
@24, et al.
Well I have no immediate interest in “gay marriage” so why should I continue to support and fight for my friends and family that are gay and want to be married? They support me in my fight to end Trans discrimination…why can’t you do the same?
Your comment is the epitome of the discrimination within our own community. We’re all part of the same fucking alphabet…GLBT.
@162
Careful Suzan…not ALL of us straight trans folk have forgotten where we came from and who we were before life got “straightened” out. I constantly fight for GLBT rights, including marriage. MY primary concern is for everyone to have equal rights. Men, women, FTM, MTF, gay, straight, bi…even the religious nutjobs.
@163: Huh?
I think we should welcome Katrina, Tom, and Kathy (and Laurel, where appropriate) back into the fold.
Even POWs are instructed to re-ally with their peers who collude with their captors. There are reasons for this. The first is because this seeming act of maliciousness can in fact based on the “weakness” of the “traitor” in the face of temptation for privileges or reduced beatings. Secondly, as we’ve seen here, continued division benefits the captors more than it helps either the traitor or fellow prisoners.
I admit would be easier to welcome these people back if they admitted to some culpability. All the same, such admonitions should not be required.
Kathy, are you backing-up your work now?
If it’s important to you, you should. And hackers aside, anything posted on the internet is usually not individual property, if only from the perspective of user agreements. If Lurleen cared to reveal her identity, then why didn’t she?
Tom, I have a radical spirit too, and as such I have to accept that I am going to be unsatisfied a majority of the time. This helps me be less angry and hurtful (counter productive) to my allies.
Katrina, in failing to take the high road (which could have included a number of options) you fell into the trap, and aided a true enemy to your cause. Did you foresee this consequence?
Laurel, clearly deleting Ms. Padilla’s profile was excessive, as above, perhaps another course of action would have spared us all this drama.
If we want our identities to be respected, we have to take the hard course and respect the identities of others.
Venomlash: This is one example of many instances of indirect transphobia coming from The Stranger. The person who wrote this article was participating in the all-too-easy scapegoating of a trans woman.
The gays and lesbians whose biggest priority is to be “equal” to a standard of privilege that is far overblown in the first place almost have everything they need. Watch as gay/lesbian marriage is legalized and trans/queer people are left in the dust.
“Every gain that gays and lesbians have made has positively impacted trans people”? That might as well have come from Glenn Beck’s ass
This certainly did wonders for your credibility.
@169: Dude.
Trannies are trouble.
So to sum up, there are two aspects to the “Lurleen” story. One, she suspended two posters from Pam’s House Blend (both have now resumed posting there) for god knows what reason. In the process she accidentally deleted every last word one of them had posted there since forever.
And two, “Lurleen” is a member of this newly-named (circa 2010) entity called “Gay Inc.” who wanted to remain anonymous on a particular blog, PHB. At least three people in the world (Kat, Kathy and Tom) don’t approve.
Who doesn’t like drama? But this is small potatoes, even by drag queen standards. Are trans standards higher or lower?
PHB and the “Barista” TOS overlords are a good example of Lefty Group-think run amok by adopting the pejorative arrogance of the Right Wing. I washed my hands of the site after being remonstrated by one of those young idiots for referring to myself as a “homosexual”–and no, I’m not joking.
So… real trans/queer issues involve lots of internet drama? Aren’t you supposed to be fighting for marriage, or something?
John Aravosis just ‘outed’ everyone who donated money to Sam Arora’s 2010 election campaign.
http://www.americablog.com/2011/03/maryl…
…and the crickets chirp.