Online Policy Group

"AOL chief donates $8 million to church that funds ex-gay ministry," read the headline on an October 18 story by the online service Gay.com. Within days, TheAdvocate.com, the Human Rights Campaign, columnist Michelangelo Signorile, and others were piling on.

The one thing that none of these players were disclosing were their own vested interests in stoking the controversy.

The thread of this story began with an October 18 article in the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel that announced a gift of $8.35 million from Jean Case, wife of America Online Chairman Steve Case, to Westminster Academy. She had attended the private high school, graduating in 1978. The bulk of the money would go toward building a new high school campus, while the remainder would fund a scholarship program.

The abbreviated Gay.com article emphasized that Westminster was founded by the Reverend D. James Kennedy, pastor of the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, and is affiliated with the church. Kennedy is a leading anti-gay television preacher whose matrix of organizations supports "ex-gay" ministries and the controversial but ineffective "Truth in Love" advertising campaign claiming that gays can change their sexual orientation through Jesus. The article insinuated that some of the money would be used to promote these activities.

The following day, HRC sent a letter to AOL asking them to reconsider the donation. "We find it unfathomable how your family could reward a school inexorably linked to teachings that say gay and lesbian Americans are not worthy of dignity, respect, and full citizenship," wrote Executive Director Elizabeth Birch.

Later that afternoon, Jean Case responded with a statement saying that the gift was "specifically directed to benefit children," a cause the Cases regularly support. Steve Case earlier had given $10 million to the private high school that he attended while growing up in Hawaii.

"The gift was not given to benefit Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church or its programs," Jean Case insisted. "In no way was it intended to send a message of intolerance. Steve and I strongly oppose discrimination in any form."

But HRC would have none of it. Spokesman Wayne Besen said, "It is not a gift toward education, but one toward indoctrination." He said the Cases were "funding an assembly line of bigots."

Michelangelo Signorile chimed in with his Gay.com column on October 23. He lambasted the Cases for attending a fundamentalist church in McLean, Virginia, and for donations their foundation made to the church. He noted that former independent prosecutor Kenneth Starr and conservative members of Congress attend the same church.

Among the web of sins that Signorile wove were revelations that the Cases had contributed to the political campaigns of John McCain and George Bush, but no Democrats. He could not find record of personal or foundation contributions to gay organizations and he dismissed corporate sponsorship of gay events as part of doing business.

Other voices

Deacon Maccubbin is founder and co-owner of Lambda Rising, which many consider to be the premier gay bookstore in the world. He also was midwife to the huge gay and lesbian community on AOL.

He called the Cases' donation "a damned foolish move to make because it sends a very inaccurate message. There is no way to interpret it as other than something that is harmful to the gay and lesbian community. It tarnishes their good name."

But "I never detected a homophobic bone in his body," Maccubbin said of Steve Case. His extensive series of contacts with Case dates from the late 1980s.

Maccubbin said that whenever there was a problem and the gay community was upset with AOL, he would drive out and have lunch with Case. "Steve's reaction was always, 'Tell me about it,' and we would tell him about it. His response generally was, 'You know, that makes sense.' And within a week or two it was changed."

Signorile fumed that the Cases are "going to have to immediately and thoroughly explain their donations … and demonstrate just how much they value the gay community as loyal customers." He all but threatened that without it, Signorile and other gays would flee AOL, deserting their favorite Saturday night chat rooms.

Maccubbin does not believe it. He says that AOL has "weathered busy signals, hardware outages, and attempted boycotts, including gay ones." And still the giant continues to grow, now passing 25 million subscribers.

"Frankly, the chat rooms on AOL are superior to the chat rooms anywhere else on the Web," Maccubbin says. "And the gay community just kind of gravitates to those chat rooms." He sees no reason why a boycott would succeed this time; most gay men are more driven by hormones than by politics.

An online industry analyst, who requested anonymity, said there really is a financial incentive for Gay.com to trash AOL. The gay site is struggling to attract users to reach a critical mass attractive to advertisers. Controversy alone will help generate that traffic, and would be even better if some of AOL's gay and lesbian subscribers became disenchanted and left the service.

In addition, the collapse of dot-com initial public offerings on Wall Street has closed that method of financing the red ink that most online operations continue to hemorrhage. The Darwinian struggle to survive is becoming more intense.

HRC surely believes its criticism of Case. But it also launched its own "HRC FamilyNet" earlier this month. A boycott of AOL might help drive more LGBT Web surfers to HRC's new site. Plus, both Gay.com and PlanetOut.com are corporate sponsors of HRC.

PlanetOut, the other large content provider targeting the LGBT community, has been silent on the controversy. Only its recently purchased subsidiary TheAdvocate.com, which is accessible through the PlanetOut home page, carried a tepid account of the controversy. Is that simply a matter of editorial judgment? Or does it reflect the significant minority share of PlanetOut held by AOL?

[Editorial note from Online Policy Group: PlanetOut had already covered the Case donation story once on October 19, 2000, and carried another story about it on the day this article was published, October 26, 2000. For more information see the Additional Resources section.]

Additional Resources

American Online Chairman Case and Wife Donate $8.35 Million to Private School Run by Anti-Gay Ministry

A roundup of news, controversy, and commentary about the $8.35 million donation made in 1999 by American Online chairman Stephen M. Case and his wife Jean to the anti-gay Westminster Academy in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, includes items from Gay.com, Miami Herald, PlanetOut, New York Times, Philanthropy News Digest, Southern Voice, Bay Area Reporter, Salon.com, and Industry Standard, October 18 - November 2, 2000.

Online Service Provider Assessment Project

This project provides a standard means for testing online services and determining how they treat certain types of content and constituents.