I disagree. I don't approve of what SW did but unless you're a man who was born and raised in the type of culture that SW was apparently raised in you can't understand what SW may have been feeling.
And if the reports are correct that Blaze outed SW, well, then, I've lost a lot of respect for Blaze. That is a cardinal sin among gay men, you DO NOT, EVER, under ANY circumstances out someone and if this was done to SW out of spite that makes it all the worse. I AM NOT saying that Blaze "deserved" anything that happened to him so don't interpret my words like that but I am saying that I can understand SW's anger, resentment and his feelings and if this report is true I have a great deal of sympathy for him.
I was outed once out of spite and while I didn't murder anyone I did deliver a solid thrashing, as our British friends might say, to the offender. Outing me in the way that person did could have gotten me seriously hurt or killed because he outed me to a group of good ol' redneck boys who lived in our dorm who after learning of my sexuality made it quite clear to me that I was an abomination, a mistake and a "vile sinner" and that the bible commands gay men to be stoned to death Two of them were expelled from the university the following year for posting KKK recruitment posters and applications to join the Klan in our dormitory common room. In the interests of full disclosure, I attended the Univ of Texas.
JMO
I'm sorry that happened to you. I know that it's wrong to out people. I appreciate Gone Girl's comments.
At the same time, I don't think we have enough context from those sentences in the OC Register piece to evaluate Blaze's actions. Very speculatively, here are some things we (or at least I) don't know:
Things I don't know about BB:
-Who did BB text about this? Did he text a few close friends, or a wider group? Did he text "everyone" deliberately, or did was he texting a trusted friend and make a very bad "reply to all" error?
-Had SW already had similar interactions with others -- was SW already known by many in the high school community to be gay? What did BB think others already knew?
-Could SW and BB have had some prior relationship that BB thought was known to others? Conversely, had SW expressed anti-gay sentiments that made it more tempting to out him? (I'm not saying he did, just that this can sometimes be a dynamic when people out others.)
-Depending on what others knew, or what BB thought they knew, was BB's "uh oh" an acknowledgement that he'd outed SW, or was it merely an acknowledgement that he'd mentioned SW coming on to him after he said he wouldn't? (In other words, if he thought SW was already out, it could have been a betrayal of a confidence but not to his mind outing.)
And then there's a lot we don't know about SW:
-From last summer to this year, did SW think of himself as straight, gay, or bisexual? How did he feel about that? What is his family's attitude toward being gay? What about the attitudes of those he hung around with and looked up to?
-What if anything had SW done that led to BB's text?
-What did SW think others knew about him? Did he know what BB had texted? If so, who did he think BB had texted? What did this mean to him?
If BB did indeed out SW, that might definitely have been a motive (though of course not a justification). But there may also have been other motives, such as spurned advances. JMO.