Bilerico Piece: Melanie Nathan’s Final Weeks at Fraudulent ‘Lez Get Real’

Posted by Melanie Nathan, Written by Adam Polaski | June 14, 2011 6:30 PM

For two and a half years, LGBT activist and blogger Melanie Nathan had been working with Paula Brooks as an editor of Lez Get Real. But less than three weeks ago, Nathan resigned from her position at the website. She was livid at the publication’s direction and Brooks’ refusal to consider Nathan’s suspicions that Amina Araff, the “Gay Girl in Damascus” who had been blogging at Lez Get Real since February, was a fraud.

Nathan couldn’t have chosen a better time to jump ship.

Last week, Amina Araff was “kidnapped” in Syria – and the only source was Amina’s “cousin,” who rattled off a post on Amina’s blog rallying the world for help. The story rapidly unraveled, and in the end, only Tom MacMaster, a married, heterosexual man living in Edinburgh, Scotland, remained. An angry blogosphere has since pounced on MacMaster, asserting that he has dramatically altered perspectives, endangered innocent lives, and presented a challenge to our conception of online identity. Read the full story….