One of the leading organizations working to prevent an anti-gay amendment to the Constitution, DontAmend.com, was the victim of a computer hacking attack on Thursday, forcing the organization to temporarily shut down its huge email list and issue an apology to its subscribers.

On Thursday, April 29 DontAmend.com sent out an email to their list with the names of Senators who support the anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment, the names of Senators who might support it, and those do not support it. Many previous emails have been sent out by DontAmend.com, but at about 2 am (CST), Friday someone hacked into the listserve, causing the list of close to 20,000 to be turned into an open posting system, with literally 20,000 people being copied on routine administrative messages, causing a cascade of spam into subscribers' email boxes.

The bad news is that as a result of all the spam, about 500 subscribers canceled being on the list. We don't blame people for being irritated. Unfortunately some people blamed us and wrote nasty emails. This saddened us, because we were the ones attacked by the hackers. We have answered hundreds of emails. The good news is that people began to realize that this was an intentional assault on a community organization by a person (or persons) who obviously are not in agreement with LGBT rights. Many have written kind notes of support, sent donations, and made offers of help. A gay police officer even offered to investigate.

Specific Things You Can Do to Help

With the community helping us, we can turn this computer nightmare into a positive. First of all, please urge everyone you know to go to the website www.dontamend.com and sign up, or re-sign up for the email list. We have secured the email list, and it will not be activated again until we have put it on a new server.

Changing servers and putting the list back up is going to cost us money. Since we are an all-volunteer organization which subsists on the sale of t-shirts and small donations, we are asking for members of the community to go on line and donate so that we can raise enough money to help us pay to correct this problem and go to a more secure listserver. Even if the donation is just $10 or $20, every bit will help.

Over the past two days we have spent many hours with our webmaster trying to see if a technical mistake was made on our part. We could find none. This is not a publicity ploy to raise more money or get more people on our list. It has been a nightmare to deal with. But, after we slept for a few hours and calmed down, we realized that we are making strides and being effective. That someone would go these lengths to stop our work shows that they are afraid of the effect we are having.

May is a crucial month for our movement. May 17 is the day that Massachusetts begins to issue licenses to same-gender couples. It is also the anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas outlawing segregation. That weekend, we are working to participate in, organize, or help with rallies, demonstrations, celebrations, and protests across the country. We are listing them on our website, and will update the lists daily.