After having their DOS attacks blocked, the cowardly homophobes then began to flood GayGamer’s forums and chat room with grotesque hate speech, over-sized image files designed to overwhelm the site, and, worst of all, death threats. Then more DOS attacks hit the site, which according to Flynn De Marco, owner of GayGamer and also weekend editor at Kotaku, all originated from the same IP address in Philadelphia. Yes, as in the City of Brotherly Love. Yes, as in that Tom Hanks movie about AIDs and homophobia. Sad, isn’t it? Apparently, having one small site in all of cyberspace where gay individuals can congregate, foster a community and share their passion for gaming was too much for some homophobes to handle.

GayGamer was taken offline temporarily over the weekend, and an official statement from De Marco was issued as a replacement. The statement is below:

“Hello, faithful readers:
As you might have noticed, we have had some connection issues in the last few days and now the site is completely down. I'm sad to say that we have been the target of homophobic hackers. Thankfully, they didn't get to our database so all of our stuff is still intact. At this point we are just waiting for our service provider to ensure everything is good before putting the server back online.
Hopefully, this will be resolved by the end of this weekend, so please keep checking back. You can't keep a good gay gamer down, so we'll be back before you know it, serving up all the sassy game content you can handle.
Cheers, Fruit Brute”

GayGamer is officially back up as of this morning, and I’m glad. The gaming world isn’t always the friendliest place for people who aren’t heterosexual males, and I think it’s great that a site like GayGamer caters to an underserved audience. Here’s the new statement from GayGamer’s crew:

“Hello Everyone,
Well, we finally made it back!
First of all let me just give a huge thanks out to everyone who wrote articles about us and has been emailing, sending IM messages and well wishes through the comments on other sites and of course, our families. The show of support has been overwhelming and it's really wonderful to see how much people care about our little community. By far the worst part of the last few days is knowing that our readers were missing not just a news site, but their community as well; a space we've all worked so hard to create.

Well, now we're back and I think the better for having been through it all. Thanks again for all the support and welcome back to all the members of our community. Also, a special welcome to any new readers who might be joining us. And now we return you to our regularly scheduled programming!
Cheers,
Flynn De Marco "Fruit Brute"
David Edison "Tiny Dancer"
Mike Wilson "Mikey"
and all of your dedicated GayGamer staff.”

Now, De Marco and his staff could have responded with vitriol and anger and called out the sucker-punching, feeble-minded cowards from Philly who took down their site. And they would have been within their right to do so. But GayGamer took the high road and is now trying to turn this unfortunate event into a positive, and I commend them for that (for more on that, check out this post here from GayGamer writer Boy Blunder). Hopefully, they can use this event to spread the word about GayGamer.

I wish I could take the high road like De Marco and GayGamer. But I can’t. I have an intense dislike for bigots (not hate, just intense dislike, because hate is wrong). And these homophobic hackers are the worst kind. Why? Because they’re cowards. Because they’re cyber-terrorists. They hide in anonymity and launch DOS attacks not to make a political statement but to spread hate and fear. These people are worse than the bigots who picket and protest gay pride festivals with their awful F-word slogans – which I won’t repeat here, but I’m sure you’ve seen them – because at least those hater-mongerers have the guts to show their faces in public. But not these hackers. No, they’re cowards. And now that their little stunt is over, they can go back to their small-minded, pathetic existences.