Brian S. Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage, should probably reassess whatever process he uses to devise computer passwords. Yesterday, for the second time in a week, NOM and Brian were the victims of thoroughly amusing (though probably illegal and therefore wrong) act of hacktivism. The resulting Tweets, viewable above, are from TheNewCivilRightsMovement.com; you can view the original story there.
The earlier act of hacktivism, which Towleroad covered at length this week, was probably more amusing — mostly because it wasn't entirely clear that a hack had taken place at all. The best bit was this blog, posted to the NOM site on Thursday:
… I must admit that we were angered when our in house documents were released but we've since had time to reflect on the strategies we've employed to divide Americans against each other on the issue of marriage. Truth be told, marriage is about bringing people together, not pushing them apart and that's exactly what this organization has been about over the past few years.
Aside from that on an unrelated matter, we've stifled free speech on our social media online properties. We're rectifying that this morning by removing the bans on the hundreds and hundreds of our opponents our staff imposed. We want to encourage an open and fair discussion about marriage and that can only happen if we welcome our outspoken opponents back into the dialogue.
We apologize for our transgressions. We're turning over a new leaf with constitutional and civil rights as our primary focus going forward. We hope you will stand with us as we turn things around for the better.
Reading that, one thought: Could it be true? Might it be possible to talk to these people? To engage in civilized discourse? To win hearts and minds?
Alas, no. Within 24 hours, NOM was screaming about being attacked by sodomy-crazed militants and begging supporters to send money to bolster the org's obviously ragged security systems. (Which raises the question: Isn't God supposed to provide believers with some kind of impenetrable defense against better-armed foes? What's the IT equivalent of David's slingshot?) So whoever it was that hacked Brian's Twitter account yesterday felt no need play nice, and his or her tweets were a good deal less friendly than the previous hacktivists' words. Interestingly, many of them seem no less true for that.
