Once there was a very public national figure who was outed as cheating on his wife.

[AngryAmish]

He was maybe the second most famous American, after Michael Jordan.

There was a blue nosed contingent who wanted to shame him, and destroy his family, for his weakness for women not his wife.

Some thought this was a bridge too far, that everyone, including public figures who are scamps, should have a right to privacy of some things.

Some thought it was time to move on from such trivialities, and they believed so much it was time to move on. They made an organization about that fact that survives to this day.

And tell me, one more time, what is the principle you espouse by outing Ashley Madison users?

[msongs]

1. data theft and hacking are ok with many on DU...unless it happens to them of course nt

[Nye Bevan]

2. The hacking was wrong and the data release was wrong.

That being said, I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for the exposed cheaters.

[HFRN]

3. work for Ashley Madison, you are playing Satan

work for the hacker that outed them, you are playing God

and you damn your soul equally, by playing either

[JackInGreen]

7. +1

[nomorenomore08]

13. +2

[madaboutharry]

4. I agree with what you are saying.

I can't bear to watch people be humiliated.

But I think for some cases the outing isn't about humiliating someone for bad behavior, it is about exposing hypocrisy. Hypocrisy makes people angry, so I kind of get why some people would want to see that.

But just putting people' names out there for no reason other than to ruin lives is out and out immoral.

[Shandris]

5. Shame and humiliation are our bread and butter, sadly.

I've decried it before and still do, but apparently it's just SO much more fun to watch one group of people maul another over arbitrary 'differences', all for the amusement of those who staged the whole thing in the first place.

And then those elite get to listen to those people talk about all their 'logic' and 'ideals', and we wonder why they think of us as less than human.

[PowerToThePeople]

6. I was not a big Bill supporter until these events.

Some thought this was a bridge too far, that everyone, including public figures who are scamps, should have a right to privacy of some things.

[REP]

8. Wait, who's getting impeached now?

It's possible to disapprove of both data breaches and Ashley Madison users.

[LiberalAndProud]

9. There is the hypocrisy in it though. But more importantly,

we have anecdotal evidence, at least, that those who profess belief in ideologies that teach to repress human sexuality can't walk the walk.

Sexual Repression: The Malady That Considers Itself the Remedy
Adultery causes earthquakes? Sexual repression can cause much worse.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sex-dawn/201004/sexual-repression-the-malady-considers-itself-the-remedy

And also the hypocrisy. If a person pretends to be a paragon of virtue, absence of virtue is a fair target.

[LeftyMom]

10. Informed consent

Cheated on spouses have the right to know if the underlying agreements if their relationship are being violated, that they may want to go in for an STI screening, or that $5 a pop is being spent every time their spouse sends a message to a (likely fictional) stranger they want to bone.

If they're cool with that it's their business. But lying and sneaking around are corrosive.

[bullwinkle428]

11. What if it's some shit-heel who played a very public role lobbying against

same-sex marriage, in addition to be an admitted molester?

"Disgraced ’19 Kids’ Star Josh Duggar Named in Ashley Madison Leak (Report)

Former “19 Kids and Counting” star and admitted child molester Josh Duggar had not one, but two accounts on AshleyMadison.com, a website that helps married individuals have secretive affairs.

The revelation came as part of the hacked information dump that is currently plaguing the exposed website and its members. Gawker posted the news and some evidence of the accounts belonging to the former family activist on Wednesday.

“Someone using a credit card belonging to a Joshua J. Duggar, with a billing address that matches the home in Fayetteville, Ark. owned by his grandmother Mary — a home that was consistently shown on their now-canceled TV show, and in which Anna Duggar gave birth to her first child — paid a total of $986.76 for two different monthly Ashley Madison subscriptions from February of 2013 until May of 2015,” Gawker stated.

The article continued: “In July 2013, he seems to have started a second account that was linked to his home in Oxon Hill, Md., where he spent his time lobbying against causes like same-sex marriage. The birthday listed in the data for Duggar’s first account is Feb. 3, 1988, one month off Duggar’s actual birthday of March 3, 1988. The birthday listed for the second account is March 2, 1988.”"

https://www.yahoo.com/tv/s/disgraced-19-kids-star-josh-duggar-named-ashley-220406898.html

Ba-BAM!!!!

[nomorenomore08]

14. +1

[TDale313]

12. Public figures who spend their lives...

And make their livelihoods advocating policies that try and enforce their religious and moral standards on everyone else, while not living up to those standards themselves deserve to have that hypocrisy called out. No, the hacking was not right and should be pursued and prosecuted if at all possible, but when you make a name for yourself by shitting all over everyone else's personal lives and privacy? If info does manage to come out that you're a hypocrite *and* an asshole? Spread that info far and wide.