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.” 
@ Tom
“Again, what is so hard for people to understand that Laurel Ramseyer outed herself….”
I think all you need to do is look at the hermetically-sealed mindset of Womyn2me, et. al.
I love how Kat Rose is saying she doesn’t have beef with Washington State but is sharpening Tom Lang’s hatchet between blows.
And I love how Tom has all this gay white male privilege but he’s the champion of Kat Rose and Friends! White knight to the rescue! A rose from m’lord as I ride off to save the anti-marriage trans community!
Tom is still so very angry that he wasn’t able to bathe in washingtons from Washington. 🙁
@100: dribbling from the vile lips of an unceremoniously I’m-not-anti-gay-but-fuck-your-rights armchair activist, cute.
@Kathy, Katrina, Tom
Like I said before, I have my priorities. The trans community has theirs. They shouldn’t conflict. I have never seen ERW do anything to promote LGB rights at the expense or loss of the T. Every win is a win for somebody.
If you three, Tom, Kathy, and Katrina, (as per your user names) are so passionate about your rights, go march into ERW and get some work done on it. I have people I feel represent me in there. If you don’t feel that way. CHANGE SOMETHING. Stop wasting time arguing on an online forum, especially one that you disagree with. Get your own forum to make your voice heard, and you can delete comments from people you disagree with at your leisure.
Just don’t get upset when a different minority doesn’t feel represented on your forum that you control the content of.
@W2M Based on the fact that you’re basically admitting you’re not reading the longer posts how can anyone be expected to believe that you’ve read enough about the life of ENDA as a bill to really be weighing in on what ’caused it to fail’?
It’s way easier to say, “thanks for all the help trannies, but it’ll be better for us if you all fucked off now.” rather than embracing the idea that gay and trans issues are intertwined and supporting the notion that you can work towards different milestones in furtherance of the same desired end result.
But, I’m just a crazy trans activist and I must be diluting myself to believe that the homos who I stood/marched/protested with for their right to marry, or serve openly in the military, should also stand with me when I’m lobbying for the right to have job security?
Was that too long?
As usual, people are too blinded by political fervor to understand my points (As for venomlash, you’ve presented yourself as trans in the past. so I don’t know what you are, except a liar.).
I have nothing at all against trans people. I reserve my condemnation for physicians and surgeons who cut them apart instead of treating their illness.
@ 106
“I have nothing at all against trans people. I reserve my condemnation for physicians and surgeons who cut them apart instead of treating their illness.”
Which, however you may wish to spin it, sews you together with Janice Raymond, Paul McHugh and Lou Sheldon.
Quite a foursome, I’d say.
Fucking wow.
How is opposing legislation that defines marriage as between “one man and one woman”, with all of the problematic implications of invoking unstable, contentious categories like “man” and “woman”, especially for transpersons, not in the interests of trans rights? I get that you (you three people, Kat, Kathy, Tom; more?) think that an ENDA, and particularly a version that explicitly includes gender (expression? identity? performativity? -coded behaviors?), is more important than marriage equality. That’s cool, but asserting that disagreement on that point is transphobic is absurd, particularly when a transperson who wishes to marry someone of a legal gender “opposite” hir own legal gender (i.e. a “straight” transperson), sie may do so without issue, while a cisgendered person or transperson my not marry someone of hir same legal gender.
You’re basically saying (or, more accurately, I’m hearing you say), “My issue is more important for me than your issue, and it should also be more important for you than your issue,” and possibly because the marriage equality issue does not directly impact you, while the employment equality issues does. It gives the impression that, in fact, you’re the one(s) being exclusionary and dismissive of the rights and concerns of people who are not entirely like you. We could further complicate the issue by discussing the degree to which “gay” people are transgendered, as normative heterosexuality is part of the normative male/female, masculine/feminine gender matrix, and anyone resisting normative sexuality is therefore transgressing normative gender (not to mention other gender non-normative practices e.g. drag shows, resistance to normative gendered pronoun usage, rejection of gendered family/relationship/sexual roles, etc. common in “gay” communities), but that’s more than I want to get into here, other than to point it out.
On the other hand, because of the normative cultural matrix for sex/gender/sexuality, discrimination on the basis of either gender or sexuality can be configured as discrimination on the basis of sex (including former sex). For example, if we take arbitrary person X, a man and a woman who each wish to marry person X are treated differently, based entirely on their respective sexes. Same for transpersons: let’s say person X decides to take estrogen supplements and have genital surgery in order to construct what is as close to a normative vulva and vagina as possible for that person; person X will likely be treated differently on the basis of hir sex (more precisely, hir sex before undergoing the stated treatments/procedures). These discriminatory practices are already illegal under extant US law; unfortunately, judicial interpretation of the law with respect to cases like these has often been anti-queer, in ways that ignore logical/legal realities. So an inclusive ENDA is still a good idea. Being an officious bitch/prick (I can’t think of a gender-neutral epithet that really captures the proper meaning, and I can’t exactly ask the person I’m insulting how sie would prefer to be insulted, but by using any gendered terms, I’m opening myself to accusations of transphobia, so I’ll go with an either/or solution and leave it up to the reader) about an inclusive ENDA and leveling false (in at least some cases, though others might be justified) charges of transphobia is not productive.
I’m getting really sick of people in marginalized positions unfairly attributing systemic bias or bigotry to individuals. It does not engender camaraderie and can even promote antipathy among the very people in more-central cultural locations who want to help. Of course, you’re probably sick of systemic bias that ignores the concerns of transpeople, but it’s a mistake to attribute that bias to all individuals. Even in cases where it’s fair, the manner in which you make people aware of their own center-blindness has a big impact on the response. You probably think you shouldn’t have to do the work of continually pointing out your concerns, and you’re probably right, but, unfortunately, self-advocacy from marginalized positions is always an uphill battle, and you’re just making it harder by giving people who otherwise might want to help a reason to not care.
@ 104
“I have never seen ERW do anything to promote LGB rights at the expense or loss of the T”
Those who think substantive posts consisting of more than a dozen, properly punctuated words are diatribes, please move on to the classifieds.
I can’t say that I have ever seen ERW do anything to promote LGB rights at the expense or loss of the T either.
I’m also not sure that either myself, Kathy or anyone here with the capability and willingness to read (I know, in FOX-addled America that’s a tough thing to ask of people) has claimed that it has. My familiarity with Washington law is that the civil rights bills there were legitimate (read: trans-inclusive) for several years prior to the legitimate one that actually became law did so. And, contrary to the literacy-challenged, fact-immune crowd’s unshakable beliefs, I’m not against marriage equality – but I am against it even being discussed in states that have enacted anti-trans gay-only rights laws and which have yet to rectify those laws.
Sadly for the foundation of the lockstep “Lurleen”-defenders’ lysergic narrative, the only reason that the name of ERW became involved in this mess was that Ms. Ramseyer, in character as “Lurleen,” decided to tout her connection to ERW in order to win a point against Kathy on that PHB thread – a thread which was about New Hampshire, one of many states which, I have since learned, Ms. Ramseyer has gotten involved in via taking gay-marriage-primacy positions online and off, something I don’t believe that anyone here in reality is challenging her right to do. She, however, doesn’t like to defend those positions against substantive criticisms from people who, in jurisdictions that have gay-only rights laws, are no less of third-class citizens when such jurisdictions bypass trans rights and go for gay marriage.
@104
“If you three, Tom, Kathy, and Katrina, (as per your user names) are so passionate about your rights, go march into ERW and get some work done on it. I have people I feel represent me in there. If you don’t feel that way. CHANGE SOMETHING. Stop wasting time”
===========================
Nobody was criticizing EWR – which appears to have an exemplary record on working for all lgbt folks. And – I don’t live in your state.
But – I have been involved in passing several local nondiscrimination ordinances & a statewide hate crimes law. I served on several lgbt boards and as an lgbt delegate to a presidential convention, went to DC to lobby many times, trained City agencies, severed as a Commissioner on the Police Review Board, worked with local prisons & shelters. So – I agree with your comment about getting things done. And put my money where my mouth is. And my name is Kathy Padilla – it’s not a user name.
Why did you automatically assume otherwise?
KatrinaRose, just because you cannot understand the difference between an informed medical opinion and your imagination of my motivations doesn’t mean that their isn’t one. It simply means you lack the intelligence, integrity, and capacity to understand when adults are talking.
@ 108
“How is opposing legislation that defines marriage as between “one man and one woman”, with all of the problematic implications of invoking unstable, contentious categories like ‘man’ and ‘woman’, especially for transpersons, not in the interests of trans rights?”
So, are all of the laws throughout America that legally recognize change of sex “in the interests of gay rights”?
@ 111
So there is only one “informed medical opinion,” eh? Yours?
I love the shrill bleating of “lurleen-defenders” from folks who are patting Tom Lang on the back during his hatchet jobs.
OH NO, WE LOVE ERW, EXCEPT FUCK THEM ALL TO HELL.
@Kathy
I was stating an option for you since Lurleen’s connection to ERW was what got this whole mess started. But if you don’t even live in WA, how is her work here so important to you? Because she is a fairly marriage-centric activist here and in other states’ online communities, she’s instantly labeled as a tool of Gay Inc. and transphobic?
I didn’t assume that you weren’t involved either. I just figure that your time and energy could be used better than to scour the internet for something to whine about. What with all you have to say, you could get more done than you can here. I mean, you’ve been at this for over 24 hours. With that time on your hands, you could certainly find another worthy accomplishment for that resume-like list you stated for me.
@115 “I didn’t assume that you weren’t involved either. I just figure that your time and energy could be used better than to scour the internet for something to whine about. What with all you have to say, you could get more done than you can here. I mean, you’ve been at this for over 24 hours. With that time on your hands, you could certainly find another worthy accomplishment for that resume-like list you stated for me.”
That was the short list. ;0 And yes – I continue to do similar work. Assisting with lgbt senior housing, working with the aclu on union political rights and suggesting policies to the feds at the moment. But – I can spare a few minutes when my name is slurred (not by you). Out sick today anyway.
You give too much credit to Randall who was a Johnnie-Come-Lately and did nothing but do “searches” of blogs and websites in order to expose his nemesis.
The collective “we” had been reporting on this since early January.
Some of us including this journalist (as the original sources had been removed at the time) did actual leg work to report on the identity of Lurleen.
http://focusontherainbowopine.outloudblo…
@ Baconcat, I was hoping to make money in Washington State?
that is the biggest laugh yet
@118: Are you soliciting monopoly money here, Tom? http://www.knowthyneighbor.org/washingto…
Lol, this shitfit is still going on.
Are we sure these people actually exist? Is Katrina Rose a real live trans-idiot? Is Tom Lang an actual faggot? What about Kathy Padilla? Is Laurel an actual dyke? Do they even exist? Or are they all some kind of right-wing puppets designed to embrace every old queer stereotype? Or maybe this is some form of absurdist Internet theater?
@ 120 & 121
You do realize that neither of you are any closer to being Schrodinger than the rest of the cats here, right?
Yes Baconcat, you caught me KTN made millions off of Washington State
I guess to balance out the money Lurleen/Laurel solicited and took from my state Massachusetts…it’s all in balance
http://bluemassgroup.com/diary/17235/les…
And just think about the money I will make when we are the first to have the Ref 71 names up running and searchable? Shortly after May of this year.
It has always been KTN’s policy to capture emails of readers, hit them up with money asks, damn we made a fortune of of the Stephen Colbert bit when he called me the Gay-stapo….and of course every state that we posted names we asked viewers to contribute before being allowed to use are searchable database.
Yes that is our mission, money raising and six figure salaries which of course we will never allow the lgbt community to see.
Oh wait, my comment # 124 wasn’t about KnowThyNeighbor.org, it was about the Equality Federation members……silly me.
Anyone who feels the need to comment on this story would do well to go back and read the accounts of what actually happened. It’s all right there, with graphic dumps of the posts that were posted, and the posts that were deleted.
The facts speak for themselves. Lurleen outed herself. All of the information that was used to link Lurleen with Laurel was publicly available information.
Perhaps a point can be made that certain people should have simply refused to comment on that public information, but you may be aware that there are a number of people in the trans community who have very good reason to believe that our needs are being trampled by either a concerted, or maybe even just inadvertent, disregard by many of the mainstream LGBT organizations when it comes to efforts to pass trans-inclusive legislation.
We have some serious concerns when it looks like people are talking out of both sides of their mouths, and we have a right to know if there is a conflict of interest when people claim to support trans rights and yet there seems to be little to action on that front, or even negative action.
There is limited space in the legislatures of this country for lobbying when it comes to LGBT issues. The mainstream orgs are sucking all the available oxygen out the room, leaving trans people little or nothing left to breathe. We do not force them to claim trans advocacy; they do this all of their own, and they have no problem turning to the trans community and claiming we should be behind their efforts and donate to their cause.
When they fail to actually advocate for us, we have a right to question them.
Wait, did anyone try to use WayBackMachine or a similar web archiving tool to see if any of the lost material had been archived somewhere? That might solve ONE aspect of the original problem…
@Tom Lang and everyone else. Stop fighting each other cause you’re just hurting everyone you’re fighting for. You just bring people down for whatever work they do. Get off your high horses and go do the damn work that needs to be done because I’m sick of all of your shit.
cal yyc, I couldn’t agree more.
I wish you were able to make that comment when KnowThyNeighbor and WhoSigned were working in WA during Ref 71, it would have come in handy to tell us ALL that we are all working for the same cause.
I think some people here need more hugs in their life.
Please, everyone, no matter how pissed or brilliant you are, go out and hug someone right now. It’ll make you feel better and the other person just might need it too.
Tom, yet again with the flapping of your mouth (or fingers on the keyboard). Stop placing blame on others. It makes you look pathetic, childish and completely impotent in the work you’re supposedly doing. I don’t care what you think of other people and by continuing to trash others, you still hurt the overall cause. So do the works and if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.
@106: Please inform me as to where or when I have claimed to be transsexual. (PROTIP: I haven’t. I’m not even a transvestite or anything.)
And I’m not a liar either; I’m a pony. A pretty little pony, groomed and currycombed until I shine in the sunlight, my silky mane billowing in the breeze, the lustrous hairs of my tail streaming behind me as I canter daintily across meadows full of pretty flowers.
@126: ABRACADABRA ALAKAZAM
@122, you do realize that everybody bickering in the comments is coming across as a self-centered moron, right? And that includes you.
“The other, more important point is that she – even though you say she wasn’t outed – abused her authority to stifle political views of people she disagreed with.”
I don’t have all the context here, but I can tell you my own personal experience with Lurleen that turned me off to PHB. Or rather, I can show you. http://www.pamshouseblend.com/showCommen…
That’s the comment where she threatened me with a ban for suggesting we not go after Roy Ashburn (and the lgbt media who didn’t out him) with pitchforks and torches, but instead offer an olive branch. I agree, Lurleen doesn’t do a good job at tolerating opposing points of view.
Oh, and I couldn’t resist pointing out at the end of that thread that I was right about him after all. Sorry if that offends anyone, but if Lurleen bans me for saying it, we’ll know she hasn’t changed much.
Another thing occurs to me… See, the moderators and the content generators for a site like PHB probably shouldn’t be the same people. Its a bit of a conflict of interest to moderate your own or your best friend’s articles, don’t you think? Especially when you’re actively involved in the discussion thread.
You got it cal yyc.
KnowThyNeighbor.org is waiting for the “As Applied Challenge” in Washington State via Doe v Reed. There was an earlier comment a bit back that claimed that we would never see the names of the signers of that anti-gay petition. Well, that is not true. We will see them eventually and our searchable database will be online at KTN. So if you see anyone you know on the list and you would like to contact them in a civil and respectful way, then please do so.
KnowThyNeighbor.org and the Washington-based WhoSigned.org will also be providing Washingtonians with an online affidavit form as you can see on our website for the Massachusetts effort. This will provide the voters of Washington an opportunity to state if they were misled, lied to or duped into signing Ref 71. As we saw in a video online taken by Massachusetts activist Chris Mason which showed the lies and trickery used by our opposition in a WA shopping center parking lot, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47u2m4hH0… there will probably be alot of affidavits. Clearly we know that if the anit-gays had told the truth about Ref 71 and if people had not been confused by the nature of the petition sheets, Ref 71 would not have made threshold. A 1200 overage is nothing, In MA we had thousands of duped people come forward because of KTN’s efforts. I still get about 1 to 3 affidavits a week and this is 6 years after the petition drive in MA.
Keep checking with KnowThyNeighbor.org for updates on the list being available.
@135: Shhh. Let them go at it. It’s a glorious trainwreck (tranwreck?). It’s like the worst of reality TV… no matter what insecurities you might have, you can look at this lot and say “well, at least I’m not like *that*.”
If we had KnowThyNeighbor, we’d have won at the ballot box and we’d have a trans-inclusive state level ENDA. 🙁
Fuck, why were we so stupid?!
Let me get my lollerskates on and roll on down to the lollerrink.
@133
OMG!
don’t stop now
you like to canter, don’t you don’t you yeah i bet you like to toss that silkyyy mane
::fap:fap:fap:fap:fap:fap:fap:fap:fap:fap:fap:fap:fap:fap::
I’m confused.
“Deleted” usually doesn’t mean “lost,” especially a five-year long thread.
Why not just dig it back up?
Howsabout we all stop shitting all over the people who are on our side, hmmm? Having allies that agree with you 70% is better than having no allies at all especially if you want ANY POSITIVE CHANGE TO EVER HAPPEN EVER.
A five year long thread NEEDS to be deleted, for dogs sakes. Jesus, how much original discussion slash masterbatory arguing can happen over 5 years?
It must be like Eggnog’s corner with extra testosterone and estrogen.
@141: http://www.oglaf.com/media/comic/admirer…
Wow.
I don’t know any of you people. I don’t know any of your organizations. After reading 144 comments, I am not sure I want to.
So here is a disinterested observer’s conclusion, based on what I read here and in the links:
Kathy Padilla, you did screw up. You went too far in the heat of the moment. Grow up and accept responsibility. What you did was meant to harass and intimidate and no amount of self-righteousness will cover that up. Apologize and move on.
Lurleen, what Kathy did was wrong. But you should have let her know that you didn’t mean to totally delete her, and offered to rectify it somehow.
Katrina, your idea of legislative priorities is idealistic, but foolish. When 12 friends are drowning, but four can be saved, you don’t pull them back into the water so you can all drown together. You help them get saved, in the hope that they will later be able to pull you out.
Tom, I don’t know who you are, but you come across as angry, bitter, lacking credibility, and not someone I would want to know or have on my side. Maybe you ought to examine your tactics and whether you have the proper personality and ability to maintain a professional demeanor for whatever work you seem to be attempting to do.
All right, that’s my two cents. I figured after the time I wasted reading this sad mess, I might as well share.
FFS, people!
I totally didn’t understand the article at all but I loooove this comment thread.
popcorn.gif
King of Queen Anne is cute, btw. Go back and check out his picture, comment 80. I’ll wait.
… I KNOW, RIGHT?
The Stranger… transphobic, NO!
Yes. It’s a well-known fact.
This “closeted” blogger outted herself long before Katrina Rose dared type Ramseyer’s name.
@149: http://forum.grasscity.com/photopost/dat…
@108: I notice that amidst all the comment-slinging fun, no one’s responded to your sensible and intelligent comment about where we should be putting our activist energy. I completely agree with you, though. Thanks.
Less blog-drama, more hugs!