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Peter Thiel On Why He's Ruining Gawker: "Nobody's Sexuality Should Be Made A Public Fixation"

"Gawker violated my privacy and cashed in on it."

Gay billionaire Peter Thiel positioned himself as a champion for individual privacy in a new op-ed published by the New York Times, justifying his campaign to destroy Gawker over a 2007 article that publicly outed him because the site "violated my privacy and cashed in on it."

Thiel is reviled among the media for bankrolling the Hulk Hogan lawsuit that sent Gawker into a downward legal spiral that ended in bankruptcy last month.

He's equally reviled among LGBT advocates for lending his support to Donald Trump's presidential campaign, and speaking at the Republican National Convention last month.

"All people deserve respect, and nobody’s sexuality should be made a public fixation," Thiel wrote, attributing the Gawker article that outed him to the public's larger "lurid interest in gay life."

"It wasn’t so many years ago, but it was a different time: Gay men had to navigate a world that wasn’t always welcoming, and often faced difficult choices about how to live safely and with dignity," Thiel wrote, revealing he had chosen to come out slowly to his friends and family and then publicly.

"In my case, Gawker decided to make those choices for me. I had begun coming out to people I knew, and I planned to continue on my own terms. Instead, Gawker violated my privacy and cashed in on it."

Thiel goes on to explain how Gawker violated Hulk Hogan in a similar way, publishing his sex tape and refusing to take it down for several months.

"The site routinely published thinly sourced, nasty articles that attacked and mocked people," wrote Thiel. "Most of the victims didn’t fight back; Gawker could unleash both negative stories and well-funded lawyers. Since cruelty and recklessness were intrinsic parts of Gawker’s business model, it seemed only a matter of time before they would try to pretend that journalism justified the very worst."

Just last year, Thiel notes, Gawker outed a chief financial officer of Condé Nast in an article before ultimately deciding to take it down.

"A story that violates privacy and serves no public interest should never be published," he added.

Today, Gawker will go up for a court-supervised auction, the $90 million starting bid for which was filed by Internet company Ziff Davis in June.

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