On Tuesday, a prominent gay rights organization rescinded an award they gave to MSNBC’s Joy Reid after more posts condemned as homophobic, transphobic, and bigoted were discovered online.
PFLAG National, which describes itself as “the nation’s first and largest organization for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people, their families, and allies” — made the announcement after more controversial writings from Reid were discovered on Monday by Mediaite.
In a statement, PFLAG Director of Communications Liz Owen wrote that the organization “has rescinded its Straight for Equality in Media award to political analyst Joy Reid.” PFLAG National President Jean Hodges added:
When we extended our invitation to Ms. Reid to honor her at our 45th anniversary celebration, we did so knowing about the blog posts from the late 2000s regarding Charlie Crist. We appreciated how she stepped up, took ownership, apologized for them, and did better—this is the behavior and approach we ask of any ally. However, in light of new information, and the ongoing investigation of that information, we must at this time rescind our award to Ms. Reid.
Reid claims that the recent writings that were discovered by Mediaite were fabricated and that she didn’t write them. On Tuesday, internet archive site Wayback Machine issued a statement saying they have found no indication that the posts were in any way tampered with or hacked in their archives.
