TAMPA – The MySpace.com profile appeared legitimate at first glance, using the same photograph of Commissioner Ronda Storms that appears on the Hillsborough County Web site and listing accurate information about her education and role on agency boards.
Then it turned to the county’s ban on recognizing gay pride, which Storms championed in June.
“I am merely trying to save them and prevent them from spending eternity in damnation,” the profile said.
Numerous postings ridiculed and satirized Storms’ views about gay people, sexual morality and religion.
“I think some friends and I are going to see ‘Brokeback Mountain’ tonight and we may hit up a gay bar or two afterwards … would you like to join us?” one posting said.
On Monday, Storms asked county officials to file an objection with MySpace, and hours later the fake profile appeared to have been removed from the popular Web site.
“This is not the first time something like this has happened, and it probably will not be the last,” Storms said. “I can’t let it go unrebutted; I can’t let it go unremarked.”
Storms discovered the profile Sunday during a routine search of her name on the Internet. A second similar profile without postings still was online late Monday.
In particular, she objected to a photo of a boy wearing a shirt saying he would have sex on the first date.
Another posting said, “Thank you for making a stance against ‘other’ religious holidays. If those terrorists, I mean, muslims (little ‘m’) really want their children to have ‘whatever’ holiday off from school, well then they just better go back to Afghanistan or wherever they come from.”
Storms led the protest last year over recognizing Gay Pride Month in the county. In her successful motion to ban the county’s recognition of anything having to do with gay pride, Storms, a lawyer, emphasized “little g, little p” be used so it referred to gay pride events by any name. She also fought to save Jewish and Christian holidays from being removed from the county’s public school calendar.
MySpace, which has about 68 million members, doesn’t require a last name to register, making it impossible for users to know whether profiles are authentic. Company spokesman Matthew Grossman said My- Space is responsive to requests from public officials to remove fake pages but would not reveal who created the Storms profile unless contacted by law enforcement.
“MySpace, being the public forum that it is, has fielded calls similar to this in the past,” he said. “As a public official, these things happen.”
Storms said she had an idea which of her critics may have created the site, but she couldn’t be sure. Storms blamed the media for failing to take past physical threats against her and her family more seriously.
“You poorly cover the threats, downplay them when they occur, and then publicly mock me when I take them seriously, so they escalate,” she said in an e-mail Monday.