Most Dunderheaded Move to Offend a Tiny Minority
By By David Volk November 29, 2010
If you come from Intercourse, Pa., Horneytown, N.C., or New
Erection, Va., and want to be an Xbox Live gamer, you can play until your eyes
fall out of your head as far as Microsoft is concerned. But woe be unto you
should you admit you hail from a gay place.
We dont mean San Francisco or Greenwich Village. 
Were
talking about towns with the word gay in their name like Mount Gay or even
Gayhead.
Its hard to say whether it was due to pride of place, but
when Josh Moore wrote in his online profile that he was from Fort Gay, W.V.
(pop. 819), Microsoft suspended his gaming privileges. Customer service
representatives refused to cross-reference the towns zip code or Google (or
even Bing) the place when Moore called to complain. When the mayor stepped in
to plead Moores case, he was told the word gay was not appropriate under any
condition. (Microsoft apparently doesnt listen in on Xbox Live in-game smack
talk.)
The situation was eventually rectified and
Microsoft apologized, but not before Moore missed a key online competition,
causing his Call of Duty Search
and Destroy team to lose. Now if only Microsoft will do something about all the
kids from N00BZville …