Manhunt's reaction to Crutchley scandal is bad PR

When the news broke that Jonathan Crutchley, the co-founder of the Cambridge-based gay hook-up site Manhunt.net gave a $2,300 donation to presidential candidate John McCain, my initial thoughts: So what?

While I'm not a fan of the GOP, I believe Crutchley has the right to be a closeted Log Cabin Republican if that's his thing. Believe it or not, there are fiscal conservatives out there who happen to be gay.

However, when reports surfaced that Manhunt.net started to delete profiles from their site if members merely mentioned the scandal, I became outraged ... in that self-righteous, First Amendment advocate sort of way.

Manhunt members like Frank Winsor of Palm Springs were reportedly kicked off the network after sending a simple e-mail asking if there was any truth to the rumors. Scott Smith from Dallas was axed from the site after he included what he knew about the Crutchley scandal on his Manhunt profile "to alert people."

Deleting members for asking questions? Not cool. In fact, it's downright inexcusable.

By censoring their pay-to-play members, they're pissing off the people in the community who literally made their site a $30 million a year monster. Unfortunately, Manhunt's bad PR move gives new meaning to their cheesy tagline: "Manhunt: Get on, get off."

Yep, people are getting off ... and not in a good way.