AKA William

Just a little while ago (No Gay or Lesbian XBOX Gamers Allowed, We Said!) I posted about Teresa, a lesbian XBOX gamer whose profile described her as being lesbian. She was harassed by other gamers and ultimately banned by Microsoft because her sexuality was “offensive.” Worse, she wasn’t the first gay gamer to have her account suspended by XBOX Live.

Well, the Human Rights Campaign has been in touch with Microsoft to try to figure out what’s going on. This afternoon, the HRC Workplace Project received this promising explanation from Stephen Toulouse, an XBOX Live employee, who characterizes the issue as follows:

“Expression of any sexual orientation (straight or gay or otherwise) is not allowed in gamertags. However we’ve heard from the user base they want that capability, so I am examining how we can provide it in a way that won’t get misused. I can’t say any more at the moment, except to say I’m working right now in finding a way to safely express relationship preference.”

And from HRC Workplace Project:

We also understand that the LGBT employee group at Microsoft engaged with the Xbox folks on developing a more flexible policy that allows people to safely express this important component of their identity. The GLEAM board is getting briefed in the near future on what the proposed changes are. Whatever the policy change, there will be engineering work to implement it so it will take some time before any change to the Terms of Service can be made. Our understanding is that the episode which led to complaints – disclosing one’s sexual orientation which resulted in harassment by other users – illustrates why the current policy was originally put in place.

So, the issue turned out to be more complex than it, at first, seemed. The “no sexuality” rule was instituted to help protect gays and lesbians. Who would’ve thought? And now that that rule is no longer necessary, and now that XBOX Live knows about the awful experiences of their gay gamers, (thanks to all of the great complaints!), the rule is being re-worked.

Now, we just need to make sure these changes are instituted.

UPDATE: GLAAD has stepped in to help explain things as well.