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"I never expected this level of attention. While the narrative voıce may have been fictional, the facts on thıs blog are true and not mısleading as to the situation on the ground. I do not believe that I have harmed anyone -- I feel that I have created an important voice for issues that I feel strongly about. I only hope that people pay as much attention to the people of the Middle East and their struggles in thıs year of revolutions. The events there are beıng shaped by the people living them on a daily basis. I have only tried to illuminate them for a western audience." - Heterosexual American writer Tom MacMaster, confessing that he was the author of Gay Girl In Damascus, a blog which gained international attention last week when MacMaster pretended to have been kidnapped.

The New York Times warns that not one person can report having actually met or spoken to the lesbian blogger allegedly kidnapped yesterday in Syria. In fact, some recent entries on her blog may have first been posted in 2007.

Although it remains possible that the blog’s author was indeed detained, and has been writing a factual, not fictional account of recent events in Syria, readers should be aware that the one person who has identified herself — to The Times, The BBC and Al Jazeera — as a personal friend of the blogger, Sandra Bagaria, has now clarified that she has never actually met the author of the Gay Girl in Damascus blog. Ms. Bagaria told The Lede that she had also never conversed with Ms. Arraf face to face via Skype, but had conducted an online relationship with her since January entirely through Internet text communications

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As the anti-government uprising in Syria has unfolded, Syrian-American blogger Amina Abdallah has attracted readers and been noticed by The Washington Post, CNN, Time,and The Guardian for her musings on the protest movement and what it's like to be gay in Syria. But her blog--A Gay Girl in Damascus--broached a very different topic today: Someone introducing herself as Abdallah's cousin wrote that Abdallah was seized by three armed men while on her way to meet with protest organizers. The cousin adds that while the family suspects Abdallah was seized by Syrian security forces, all that's known right now is that she's missing.

A Facebook page demanding Amina's release has been launched.