How gay blogs helped torpedo AT&T/T-Mobile merger

Michelangelo Signorile pens a post-mortem for Huffington Post on the major role LGBT blogs played in the defeat of the proposed AT&T/T-Mobile merger.

It was in early June when gay bloggers first got wind of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation's endorsement of the merger. As Towleroad put it, "GLAAD Touts AT&T-- T-Mobile Merger as 'Social Justice' in Bizarre Endorsement Letter to FCC." The letter from GLAAD to the FCC indeed connected "faster wireless" to "social justice": "The LGBT community has a longstanding commitment to all forms of social justice. That is why we look at the deployment of faster wireless Internet options not only from financial and technological viewpoints but also in terms of how this improves society."

Signorile

     Americablog asked, "What is a gay rights organization doing weighing in on a phone company merger?" Queerty and The Bilerico Project bore in as well. Many noted the $50,000 donation that GLAAD had received from AT&T, one of several groups, like the NAACP, that backed the merger and got cash from the telecommunications giant. It also came to light, as Dan Savage at Slog noted, that GLAAD had apparently written another letter to the FCC opposing net neutrality -- AT&T's position -- only to send a second letter on the topic asking that the first be withdrawn, implying it was forged and noting that the signature was not that of the GLAAD president. Something very strange was going on.