"A Gay Girl in Damascus"

Turns out to be

In this new double-entendre world into which we have drifted, the Washington Post is to be forgiven for headlining the story,‘A Gay Girl in Damascus’ comes clean. Not so the fat fake lesbian named Tom MacMaster who hoodwinked untold thousands by giving himself an online sex change for (Isn't it always?) 'the greater good.' It ended (Doesn't it always?) in tears at bedtime..

Gerard Van der Leun:

It's a leftoid fantasy and that's why so many bought it. The reality is something else again.

The reality is that, along with the rest of the population, those who are gay inside rabid dictatorial regimes such as Syria and Iran are not safe from repression, imprisonment, torture, and execution. And those who are gay inside these regimes know this to a fare thee well. They might be willing to speak out but typically only after they get out. To someplace safe in the ever more tolerant west. Someplace like, say, Edinburgh, Scotland. Someplace so free that even a fat, white, male "mideast activist" can change himself into a young, dusky, slender hot lesbian.... and get away with it because, well, people just "want to believe" in six impossible things before breakfast.

Palin's enemies; believing three impossible things before breakfast.

UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg notes that this "gay girl" was a Liberal who used "his" persona to bash Israel. Of course "she" would be considered "authentic."

In fact, how dare "advocates of war, occupation, dispossession and apartheid" use Arab and Muslim hostility to gays as "'evidence that the primitive sand-people don't deserve anything other than killing by the enlightened children of the West."

Besides, "she" has never been harassed by Arabs for being gay. But in America, "she" has been "struck by strangers for being an Arab" and "had dung thrown at me" for wearing the hijab.

Except that is a lie.

Worse, it's propaganda. McMaster's fake-but-accurate lesbian was perfectly pitched to Western liberals desperate to alleviate the pain of cognitive dissonance. No longer must you think too hard or make tough choices if you're, say, anti-Israel and pro-democracy or pro-gay rights and in favor of the self-determination of Muslim fanatics. Heck, you can even stop worrying and love a lesbian feminist who sees no big deal in wearing a religiously required sack over her head.

Of course she was a hero. Of course she didn't exist.