Hasta La Gadget!

[Above, The Fort Gay Free Will Baptist Church, Fort Gay, WV.]

Cassville was small town in West Virginia that lies on the banks of the Tug Fork and Big Sandy rivers. In 1932, for reasons that are apparently now entirely forgotten, the town changed its name to Fort Gay. I had never heard of the place–and neither, apparently, had Microsoft. After all, as of the 2000 census, the town only boasted 800 residents.

The company suspended a gamer after he listed the town as his location on the service, declaring it offensive.

“At first I thought, ‘Wow, somebody’s thinking I live in the gayest town in West Virginia or something,'” the gamer, Josh Moore, told the Associated Press. “I was mad. … It makes me feel like they hate gay people.”

Moore, a 26-year-old unemployed factory worker contacted Microsoft customer service to complain about the suspension. He told the incredulous Microsoft employee to Google the city’s ZIP code–25514. The employee refused (after all, they probably only use Bing over there, right?).

The mayor of the town attempted to intervene in the conflict, only to be told that, the word ‘gay’ “was inappropriate in any context,” according to the AP.

Microsoft has since apologized for the mix up, promising to “make it right.”