The site's linked articles target existing religious, ethnic, and gender-based civil rights movements, turning each movement's members against one another by inflaming some members' off-topic antigay sentiments. Let's briefly examine how WeAreThinking does this.

The front page loads an animation featuring dramatic music and a threatening voice that sets African-Americans against gay Americans:

"Today in America, civil rights are being hijacked. Civil rights are being hijacked. Think about it."

A closer examination of the site's interior uncovers a series of rhetorical ploys and evasions by people who appear not to be the blacks, feminists and Democrats that they suggest themselves to be. Furthermore, the site is designed using Adobe Flash in a manner that not only precludes external links to its internal pages, but also prevents search engines and web archives from properly recording its content. A question arises: If it's not designed to be found via search engines, then is the site intended for public consumption, or is publicity for the site being targeted at certain volatile interest groups?

As questions begin accumulate, it would be nice to know whom to consult for answers.

But unlike most sites' About pages, this site's About page does not disclose the site's ownership or leadership. It instead profiles two young "representatives" -- writers with no history, employed by mystery bosses. One writer, Ashley Perryman, claims to be a "women's rights activist" and yet asserts that "the gay agenda" harms women by allegedly blurring gender identity. This is a common argument of gender conformists and religious rightists, not liberty-affirming women. The other writer, Shaun Kurian, claims that "gay rights" (his quotes) harm the Democratic Party. A Google search of Kurian turns up nothing to suggest Democratic political affiliation or even past writing samples.

The Facts page of WeAreThinking consists of a series of opinion pieces that:

• encourage schism among Jewish congregations and moderate churches that have sought to balance spiritual tradition, sexual realism, fidelity, compassion and justice;
• accuse unspecified media of overlooking a 2004 Atlanta antigay black protest (a linked article fails to substantiate the charge); and
• steer black Democrats toward the GOP.

An Exgay topical page opens not to a constructive profile or knowledge base for exgays, but rather to a four-year-old assertion by religious rightists that a Chicago woman, Mary Stachowicz, was murdered because of her supposedly exgay Catholic identity. The Illinois Family Institute and other religious rightists equated Stachowicz's death with that of Matthew Shepard of Wyoming, who was killed in 1998, allegedly because he was homosexual.

Whatever one's views might be toward hate-crime laws, the facts did not support the religious-rightists' accusation that Stachowicz was killed for being Catholic or exgay. The crime was reported locally and in gay and antigay media in 2002: Stachowicz was attacked after she preached the sinfulness of homosexuality at the office janitor, who then reacted violently to memories of his mother's condemnations of homosexuality. Stachowicz was not killed because she was Catholic or exgay, she was killed because she reminded a deranged individual of his mother. Furthermore, it seems unlikely that Stachowicz even identified as exgay. Same-sex-attracted conservative Catholics -- in particular, those affiliated with Courage, an antigay support group for same-sex-attracted Catholics -- generally do not identify as exgay. Disliking the misleading political and sexual connotations of "exgay" that have been fostered by Protestant evangelicals, they identify instead as "chaste" or as celibate gay or lesbian.

Other articles that are linked from WeAreThinking's Exgay page accuse generic "gay activists" of menacing, attacking, and stifling generic exgays. But details are left sketchy, some supporting links have broken, and the site's news section is more than two months out of date, suggesting either a financial crunch or an apathy toward the notion of supporting documentation.

Oddly enough, for all the ill-documented talk of censorship, the allegedly suppressed message of exgays is not conveyed by this pro-exgay site, either. A question naturally arises: Are exgay activists suppressed, or are they devoting so many resources to antigay discrimination and to religious-right efforts to deter civil rights for others, that a positive message about exgays never emerges? Are exgays really suppressing themselves?

The website's Exgay page links to the following exgay organizations: the reparative-therapy advocacy group NARTH, the antigay Catholic group Courage, the pseudo-Jewish/evangelical group JONAH, exgay activist D.L. Foster's "Powerful Change" nameplate, the nonreligious People Can Change, and the exgay network Exodus International. More questions arise: Did these organizations assent to an affiliation with the WeAreThinking political action committee, do they know the identity of the PAC's operators, and why would they wish to be associated with a site that seeks to splinter other civil rights movements?

These unanswered questions draw us full circle, back to the identity of those working behind the scenes at WeAreThinking.

Like the About page, the Contact page offers no phone number and no names of officials or employees. The given office address is 2020 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Suite 816, Washington. But there is no suite 816. In fact there are no suites at 2020 Penn. That location is a UPS Store located in the lobby of a prestigious downtown office building and mini-mall, in a neighborhood that hosts some of the city's leading lobbyists and think-tankers. Suite 816 is one of many private mailbox located in the store. So WeAreThinking PAC has a prestigious-sounding address -- but no office, at least not one that the public is intended to know about.

An examination of the website's domain name registration turns up no useful information, either -- just a proxy name, e-mail address, and false street address in the Northern Marianas Islands of the western Pacific Ocean. The name, phone number and e-mail address each turn up zero results via Google.

If there are some actual antigay same-sex-attracted persons in existence who really hope to form a genuine and constructive civil rights organization for themselves, then this site poses a threat to that hope. Veteran civil rights activists know that:

• A group that fails to promote a positive message and identity for itself does not win many friends,
• A group that undermines the rights of others will lose support among civil-rights allies, and
• A group so surreptitious that it cannot identify its principals, lacks the visible constituency that is necessary to grant it legitimacy.

related stories: Wikipedia summarizes the Mary Stachowicz case. Jody Wheeler and Good As You discuss the exploitation of Mary Stachowicz and similar cases by the religious right. The pro-tolerance religious group Soulforce reacted to the murder by saying that if Stachowicz was murdered in an attempt to intimidate all Christians, then the case should qualify as a hate crime.

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