Editor of "Lez Get Real" Also Not Gay, Not a Girl

This morning, I wrote about a straight American man admitting that the "Gay Girl in Damascus," Amina Abdallah Araf al Omari, was a fictional character he had created.

This afternoon, the editor of "Lez Get Real," known as "Paula Brooks," on whose site "Amina" had written before launching "Gay Girl in Damascus," revealed he, too, is a straight man named Bill Graber.

Just one day after the author behind a popular Syrian lesbian blog admitted to being a married, American man named Tom MacMaster, the editor of the lesbian news site Lez Get Real, with the tag­line "A Gay Girl's View on the World," acknowledged that he is also a man.

"Paula Brooks," editor of Lez Get Real since its founding in 2008, is actually Bill Graber, 58, a retired Ohio military man and construction worker who said he had adopted his wife's identity online. Graber said she was unaware he had been using her name on his site.

...Brooks had told reporters at The Washington Post that she could only speak on the phone through her father because she was deaf. She provided a photograph of her license as proof of her identity, which showed a woman named Paula Brooks.

On Monday, we continued to question her identity. We spoke to the man who identified himself as her father, who finally admitted after numerous telephone conversations: "I am Paula Brooks." That man turned out to be Bill Graber.

Graber said he started the site to write about gay issues after seeing the mistreatment of close friends who were a lesbian couple. He said the site was "done with the best of intentions." As a former Air Force pilot, he also said he used the site to argue in favor of the Don't Ask Don't Tell repeal.

"I didn't start this with my name because... I thought people wouldn't take it seriously, me being a straight man," he said.

Supposedly neither man had any idea that the other was running a scam: "Amina often flirted with Brooks, neither of the men realizing the other was pretending to be a lesbian." Yeesh.

For the record, I am a woman. And I can confirm that all the women contributing regularly to this site are also women. (File Under: Things I Never Thought I'd Write.)