The Crusaders

I have recently become aware of an interesting subset of people who I will refer to as 'The Crusaders.' These are people who take it upon themselves to serve as self-proclaimed guardians of gay dating. Sort of like a combination between the religious police in Saudi Arabia and a traditional Jewish matchmaker. Apparently, these individuals have taken it upon themselves to get involved in reviewing past relationships, discussing the events leading to the break-up or dissolution thereof and then acting as judge, jury and executioner in one. I naively thought that this was only the purview of family and close confidants but - oh, no - in the Midwest this seems to be quite a common occurrence. If only Stalin had these guys on his side to include in his troikas!


The ironic part, of course, is that the people participating in this are not the most upstanding citizens in the gay community. Much like other figures of authority, they have multiple skeletons in their closets (no matter how big and nice they may be) but behave mostly with impunity. They operate under the pretext of weeding out the 'bad' people within the dating pool with the goal of watching out for 'family.' Quite an interesting mission, that. Apparently, sleeping simultaneously with 2 men in a partnership without the other knowing is one of the admitting requirements to this select circle.

But, no fear! Your trial will be done in absentia, the hearing conducted by at least 12 people you have never met, the evidence presented will be exclusively one-sided with whatever supporting data can be gleaned from Facebook research and Google. Finally, the verdict will either be delivered to you by e-mail or a random person approaching you in a gay bar.


In summary, while there seems to be no good preventative measure for this character defamation, you may want to recruit counsel, proficient in gay relationships [e.g. gay lawyer friend]. Either that or head to Jerusalem to mount a counter-assault.