ANOTHER LESBIAN BLOGGER ALSO A STRAIGHT MAN

In the wake of the scandal surrounding the “Gay Girl in Damascus” blog, the ‘female’ editor of a well-known lesbian news site had admitted that he is also a straight man.

“Paula Brooks,” the editor and founder of Lez Get Real is actually 58-year-old American Bill Graber; a retired former Air Force pilot and construction worker from Ohio who adopted his wife’s identity online, revealed The Washington Post.

Graber, like Tom MacMaster from the ‘A Gay Girl in Damascus’ blog, was able to get away with his deception by only communicating and interacting online and finding ways to avoid meeting people or talking over the phone. His wife apparently had no idea that he was using her identity.

On Monday, after trying to pass himself off as Paula Brooks’ father to The Washington Post over the phone, Graber finally admitted “I am Paula Brooks.”

He insisted that his intentions were well-meaning and said that he started the site in 2008 after he witnessed lesbian friends being subjected to homophobia.

“I didn’t start this with my name because… I thought people wouldn’t take it seriously, me being a straight man,” he told the Post.

‘I am right royally pissed off and upset…’

Ironically, it appears that Graber corresponded and flirted with MacMaster online, apparently each under the impression that the other was a lesbian woman.

On the Lez Get Real Facebook page, two of the site’s writers expressed their disappointment at the news that their editor was really a man.

“I know you are all disappointed, I am too. I trusted Paula. My heart is breaking,” wrote Natasia Langfelder, Entertainment Features Editor at Lez Get Real, who tried to prove her own identity by posting a link to a video of herself.

Bridgette P. LaVictoire, another contributor to the site, added: “Right now, I am right royally pissed off and upset.”

Graber told The Washington Post that he hoped that the revelation would not hurt the site and what it had achieved.

Meanwhile, Edinburgh University has suspended the computer privileges of 40-year-old MacMaster, who is a student at the university.

It is also conducting an investigation into his hoax blog that supposedly documented the life of a 25-year-old Syrian American lesbian woman living in Damascus for five years.