Wipeout Homophobia on Facebook: Silencing Hate, Creating Community

Launched only three months ago, the Facebook page Wipeout Homophobia on Facebook is now an impressive 45,000 members strong. It's become a worldwide gathering place for GLBT people, and our friends, and has become a powerful force in silencing voices of hate and not just on Facebook.

  Kevin Patrick O'Neil

The page's origins were simple: Kevin Patrick O'Neil, a resident of Durham, England, grew tired of the anti-gay, racist and sexist pages being posted on Facebook by various hate groups and individuals. He found that by reporting these postings to the social network's powers that be, they were deleted. A delighted O'Neil launched the Wipeout page in order to turn his efforts into a group activity. The results were astonishing.

Hundreds signed on every single day, from all corners of the globe and from all spectrums that fall under the GLBT umbrella. Straight allies signed on as well.

"We have well over 15,000 straight members," says the out O'Neil. "I appreciate every single one of them and thank them for their support."

Wipeout's reach has been a long one. Last week, after California Judge Vaughn Walker ruled Prop 8 unconstitutional, participants in a Fox News Channel poll disagreed with the Judge by a wide margin. O'Neil linked the poll to Wipeout, and the poll turned around instantly. The Fox poll now stands at 72% in favor or Judge Walker's ruling.

Wipeout members have since joined in a petition drive to save the life of a gay man in Iran who was sentenced to death for the "crime" of being gay.

O'Neil reports that there have been a few bumps along the road.

Hate mail from right wing anti-gay types is to be expected, but O'Neil was saddened when he got hate mail from within the gay community. "They don't like religious posts, but they don't like anti-religious posts, or they don't like straight people being members," he says. "We had to stop posting altogether one weekend because the hate speech from the very people we were defending got so bad. We all just love to hate -- don't you hate that?"

O'Neil solved the problem by setting up very strict guidelines for membership and posting — no hate speech or abuse of any kind will be tolerated.

Wipeout Homophobia on Facebook has since become one of the friendliest and supportive GLBT spaces on the web. Besides activism, members now post art, poetry, videos, personal stories, or just offer each other a kind word.

With 45,000 members (and growing) it's not unusual to see hundreds of comments on a single post! To handle the volume, O'Neil now operates the page with a staff of five.

"We actually achieve what we set out to do," says a justifiably proud O'Neil. "We've gotten 1300 homophobic pages removed from Facebook and we have a real sense of community building in this group. Know how we did it? We listened to the members, we got rid of the bigots and the self servers and the haters. We kept the genuine, nice, normal, average, wonderful people that we have today, and we all worked together to make our voices heard."