I’m also really proud of the work I did with DotGay this year.
From producing a second season of our Revry series in collaboration with Two Penguins, to raising over $168,000 for GLAAD and CenterLink: LGBT Centers, the safer internet we set out to create for queer people has grown into the most beautiful community — and the gayest brand on earth.
Thanks to Roxane Gay, George Takei, Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, The Ritz-Carlton Hotel, and every single one of you who registered your .gay domain names this year.
Big thanks to my friends at Nike for sending me a pair of this year’s #BeTrue #Pride Edition kicks! I’m wearing them today with my GAY IS GOOD socks from DotGay and am feeling very homosexual and proud. 🤘🏳️🌈
I wrote a thing for the .gay blog this week. Check it out HERE, or keep reading below.
I will never EVER stop smiling about this happy ending. Come at me, trolls, tech bros and homophobes! We’re ready.
I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS DAY FOR A VERY LONG TIME.
Here’s the full transcript of the post:
Creating a safer internet with .gay
The internet has long been a place where LGBTQ people go to build relationships, express ourselves, and promote visibility of our lived experiences — and yet, for all the internet’s openness and accessibility, it also holds prejudice, hate and discrimination.
I’m no stranger to this experience, as an out gay man who signed his first record deal at the age of 17 and hosted a TV show on the first-ever gay cable channel — the Logo network — during a time (pre-RuPaul’s Drag Race) when very little LGBTQ content existed in the mainstream. The reality is, I was publicly gay long before it was accepted or respected. 1998 was a very different world, when my first record came out. We all watched what Ellen Degeneres had to go through and rise above, just to be herself. While I’ve been very lucky to have received all kinds of opportunities over the course of my career, I have also constantly found myself at the forefront of bigotry — often having to navigate trolling, online harassment, and bullying with very little recourse for me personally, or for my very gay brand.
I’ve spent decades fighting the tech industry to change policies that are inherently designed to sustain and profit from systemic abuse online, all in an effort to help keep LGBTQ people like myself safer. I’m proud to have some victories under my belt, but unfortunately we have a long way to go, and the work is far from over. Over the past couple of years, as online abuse directed at me reached an all-time high, I realized I was in a unique position to use my platform and story to help usher in change. It’s this fight that has led to me partnering with Top Level Design on the launch of .gay.
This year .gay is embarking on an unprecedented journey, in commemoration of the first Pride parade. As a domain, .gay will operate not unlike .com, .net, .edu, etc., but we also have the historic opportunity to create a completely new namespace for people in LGBTQ communities to celebrate and connect online. Our launch begins with what’s called the “Sunrise” period on February 10th and culminates with general availability later this year, with the same spirit as the original disruptive and passionate voices who marched 50 years ago. .gay is open to all – it’s a virtual Pride flag that honors decades of history and progress, while inspiring an inclusive, welcoming future for everyone.
“At .gay, we are committed to doing things differently.”
At .gay, we are committed to doing things differently. Our anti-abuse and harassment policies found within our “.gay Rights Protections” go well beyond industry norms to establish this domain as a gay-friendly internet space. This policy exists to ban harassment, hate-speech and anti-LGBTQ content, as well as provide specific, timely remedies for domains that intentionally use .gay to malign or harm LGBTQ individuals or groups. While this may put us out on a limb, it’s a duty that we do not take lightly, and we will continue to engage with other LGBTQ stakeholders to responsively enact this policy in order to create a safer internet for our communities.
We know that we will not be able to single-handedly turn the internet into a hate-free zone, but .gay is committed to doing our part, and we absolutely reject the status quo — which is to do nothing without a court order. While we are optimistic that our revenue donations, proud branding and sheer existence of .gay will keep hate away, we are prepared for when the haters arrive.
As someone who has spent most of his life advocating for LGBTQ communities around bigotry, violence, and mental health disparities, I am truly moved by this historic, industry-leading commitment that .gay is making. One of the most exciting parts of this endeavor is the support we’ll be providing to the community by way of the platform. For every name registered, .gay will donate 20% of wholesale revenue to support the work of nonprofits helping to address key issues facing the LGBTQ population.
In our first year, we’re proud to share this donation with GLAAD and CenterLink, two organizations that offer vital tools and life-saving services. We chose CenterLink, an umbrella organization for over 250 LGBTQ centers across the US and around the world, because of their efforts to provide safe physical spaces that liberate, dignify and empower LGBTQ lives, loves, and families. This aligns with our mission to create safe online spaces and increased visibility for LGBTQ people. We are equally honored to be partnering with GLAAD, whose preeminent legacy and continued work are rooted in fighting against misrepresentation and hate in the media. The GLAAD Media Guide is core to our marketing and policies, ensuring that all .gay registrars will represent LGBTQ people positively and accurately.
Imagine for a moment how .gay would have been received during the .com boom of the ‘90s — an era of headline violence and no established gay rights? It would have been a total nonstarter, given the social change that we were still fighting for. It’s easy to forget exactly how far we’ve come, but our time is now. .gay is a movement and I’m excited to build it, hand-in-hand with each of you.
.gay is a space for businesses, organizations and individuals to converge and stand together for something bigger than just themselves. With each domain registered we have the unique opportunity to use our platform to celebrate and grow the vibrancy of the gay internet.
I hope that you’ll join us, and be among the first to take this bold step for the tech industry.
When I was a kid I felt I deserved to be mistreated because I was gay. This had a lot to do with me not seeing grown gay people standing up for themselves — and it wasn’t safe to.
So when you see me fighting now, it’s not about winning.
I’m reclaiming myself, and all the years.
After over a full year of this super intense, targeted harassment campaign against me by the since-banned Reddit trolls, every single tech company has intervened except for YouTube, which just this week let us know they will not be taking action to protect me on their platform.
The teams at YouTube have all the facts, covered extensively everywhere from People Magazine to gay blogs, to the official Reddit blog itself. This situation caused Reddit to change their entire harassment policy, yet YouTube would still rather get paid for the clicks than help. More on that setup HERE.
The safety team at Reddit, which had previously been the garbage fire of the internet, said it best in their post about why they intervened: “Ban evaders (and others up to no good) often work across platforms, and so it’s important for those of us in the industry to also share information when we spot these types of coordinated campaigns.”
Yet, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki and Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s teams at YouTube refuse to look at the big picture and have sided with the content creators (trolls) whose entire goal in mocking me for my past mental health struggles, discrediting my career, publishing lies about crimes I’ve never committed, and attempting to dangerously “out” people in my private life for being gay, is to drive me to suicide — something they have stated plainly throughout this process as their end goal in torturing me.
YouTube’s charming clickbait algorithm serves up these videos, intended to organize troll narratives and coordinate these attacks across platforms, while also allowing these troll YouTube creators to monetize the abuse, to anyone who watches my music videos or searches my name. None of it is true, and all of it is meant to diminish, intimidate, cyberstalk and harass me, as part of this larger targeted abuse campaign.
No one should have to endure what I have over the past 18 months since this latest wave of homophobic hate and attempts to destroy me, my career and my reputation, began. Wikipedia locked the Logan Lynn article down FOR THIS VERY REASON. Facebook jumped in to help and removed all of the fake profiles and instances where even these exact videos that YouTube refuses to remove were posted on their platform and on Instagram. Twitter Support jumped in and banned these users from harassing me or posting these videos on their platform, too.
It is ONLY YouTube who refuses to do anything about their piece of this mess, and it’s absolutely disgusting — especially in light of their recent announcements and the positive PR they’ve received for supposedly updating their harassment policies to also include public figures. The reality is, it’s all for show. They have no intention of actually making YouTube safer for anyone, because clicks are clicks and ad revenue is ad revenue.
To anyone who could possibly help me over at YouTube and Google: I am literally begging you to just be as decent as Reddit. That’s a VERY low bar, and one you should be trying to hit.
This right here is a twisted business model:
Removing a handful of comments encouraging me to commit suicide under the videos, but leaving the actual videos where the trolls are organizing and amplifying those exact narratives and comments as their larger online abuse strategy misses the mark of community safety completely.
The Logan Lynn Reddit page got banned and shut down because these YouTube users and their troll friends took it over — an exact directive from one of the many videos we have reported on YouTube over the past year, encouraging viewers to find me on other sites to bully and harass me.
As far as my team, attorney, and management is concerned, the careless, irresponsible Executive Team at YouTube is solely responsible for the torture at this point because you continue to protect and promote the abuse as “content”. This is ALL on you. What you’re doing is dangerous and wrong.
Oh haaaaayyyy gay stuff! Deadline Hollywood just announced the release date for the final season of EastSiders TV, featuring 5 of my songs — one of which is brand new and was written specifically for the EastSiders soundtrack.
Check it out HERE. Also, binge season 4 on Netflix December 1st — and catch up on the first 3 seasons now!
