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.gay and Star Trek star troll the right to promote new gTLD

Kevin Murphy, October 12, 2020, 21:52:45 (UTC), Domain Registries

.gay registry Top Level Design has latched onto a social media trolling trend to promote the gTLD shortly after its launch.

The registry has created the web site TheProudBoys.gay, with the support of Star Trek actor and gay rights activist George Takei, as part of a broader social media effort to shame an American far-right group called The Proud Boys.

The Proud Boys is a political collective active in North America, widely regarded as far-right, neo-fascist, and sometimes a “hate group” or “white-supremacist”.

Whether it’s overtly homophobic is probably open to question — the group denies the charge — but in the US if you’re on the far right it’s usually implicit you do not support gay rights.

The Proud Boys are are probably most famous due to the first US Presidential debate last month, when Donald Trump declined to condemn the group with sufficient clarity.

After the debate, Takei suggested on Twitter that people who support gay rights post images of gay people doing gay things on social media using the hashtag #proudboys.

Sure enough, the hashtag was shortly dominated by photos of men kissing each other, or dressed in revealing leather outfits. It was really quite funny.

And then Top Level Design put up its web site on a .gay domain, which compiles some of these social media posts alongside a post condemning the Proud Boys.

The registry said it wants to “create a positive online space that celebrates this new community and galvanizes voters”, presumably referring to the imminent US Presidential election.

Takei seemed to endorse the site on Twitter, and Top Level Design suggested he had endorsed it.

While I find this all very funny, I have to wonder whether it’s strictly within .gay’s stated goals.

Top Level Design has said that it won’t allow bullying in its TLD.

I assumed that meant that if somebody used a .gay domain to “out” somebody not gay or not ready to come out, the domain would be suspended.

In this case the domain appears to be being used to imply plainly straight people are gay, which just feels wrong to me.

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Comments (1)

  1. Jun Ho says:

    The way .GAY is being operated and managed by Top Level Design (TLD Registry) is disgraceful!

    The TLD Registry does not allow LGBTS to criticize the LGBT community itself, because they feel excluded or because they create a standard of beauty.

    I noticed in the registration statistics, that .LGBT is growing little by little and that .GAY was not supported by several NGOs.

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