Members of the Carmen Rupe Memorial Trust have set up a blog in response to comments published on website GayNZ.

The blog, The Sock Puppet Insurgency, was set up following a recent article published on GayNZ, the 2012 “Dishonours List” in which the CRMT were mentioned.

The members of the Trust who run the blog write about the complicated history between the CRMT and GayNZ and also speak of claims made that the trust had taken donations under false pretenses.

They believe a couple of members of the GLBTI community started a “viscous smear campaign on Facebook, which in retrospect seemed carefully designed and orchestrated with one goal – to kill off the CRMT before it ever came into being” and say that “GayNZ.com have been only too happy to assist in this endeavour.”

GayNZ mentioned the Trust as one of 2012 dishonours, saying “The most disappointing story this year has been the bitchiness and bickering in the wake of Carmen Rupe’s death. Carmen did like a bit of drama, but this has just been disgraceful.”

“This group has also tried to make Carmen out to have been another Rosa Parks when, really, she was just Carmen, a transsexual hooker with massive boobs and a gloriously brazen attitude who was a trailblazer not by riding around in figurative buses standing up for for GLBTI rights, but just by being Carmen.

| Sarah Murphy