“Why is it that all of the big gay non-profits, from the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) — ‘Gay Inc.’ — have failed to utter a word of support for Private Bradley Manning, let alone really campaign for him?” asks Andy Thayer at CounterPunch.

Instead of mining the LGBT community for personal fame and fortune, as a number of “air-head celebrities” do when they express their support for gay rights, Manning, who became one of the nation’s most prominent homosexuals after he was apprehended and jailed for allegedly passing confidential documents to WikiLeaks more than three years ago, has “actually done something to support social justice.”

Among those actions are the following: He exposed U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, leaked documents that helped kick off the Arab Spring and exposed the Obama administration’s support for the 2009 military coup in Honduras (an event that made it the murder capital of the world).

But when Manning was stripped naked in a cell for “days on end … where were the protests from the gay human rights groups?” Thayer asks.

“If a homophobe had so much as broken Chaz Bono’s finger nail,” he says, “rest assured that GLAAD, NGLTF and HRC would have been on the case. But why the silence about Manning?”

— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.