If you've heard of the hacker group Anonymous, you'll know it's notorious for backing the underdog and getting involved in the most unlikely controversies. So it should come as little surprise that they have taken to backing Kaitlyn Hunt, the Florida high school student convicted for dating a 15-year-old fellow student.
According to an article in Mother Jones, the consensual same-sex relationship began when she was 17 and the girl was just 14. But when she turned 18, the girl's parents had Hunt arrested and charged with "sexual battery on a person 12-16 years old." To make matters worse, she was kicked off the basketball team and later expelled from school.
She can either go to trial or admit her felony and be placed under house arrest for two years, with the sex charge appearing on her record.
No sooner has Hunt's family pleaded for justice, than the international "hacker collective" known as Anonymous rose to the challenge. In addition to launching the Twitter hashtag #OPJustice4Kaitlyn, Anon issued a press release with the truly priceless opening line: "Greetings, bigots."
Though the case reads like a sexual witch hunt, County Sheriff Deryle Loar maintains there is no double standard going on: "If this was an 18-year-old male and a 14-year-old girl," he said, "it would be prosecuted in the same way."
Hm, maybe, maybe not. Presumably the girl's parents knew of the relationship while both girls were minors. They plainly disapproved even though the relationship was consensual.
Though mired in mystery, Anonymous apparently has a "significant" gay membership and "an extreme commitment to free speech," according to Gabriella Coleman, a McGill University anthropologist currently writing a book about the group.
While the Sheriff's office may never have heard of Anonymous before now, you get the sense that they will feel its wrath sooner rather than later. Already the group has a petition of some 200,000 names in the works that will see many of the authorities involved in the case given the sack.
"That petition will be delivered by hundreds of men and women, holding signs or wearing masks, yelling into megaphones and getting all up in your business, right on your doorstep," read Anonymous' press release. "We can afford to stand there for some time, because, LOL, there are a million more of us than there are of you."
What do you make of this case?
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