She was used to being isolated. She was one of only a few women in a fire department of about 100 employees, and even though she tried to fit in by sleeping at the firehouse two nights each week — even though she had won E.M.T. of the Year, passed all the fitness tests, registered as a Republican, collected guns and voted for Trump in 2016 — she was always defined by the ways she stood apart. A vegetarian. A bisexual. A single woman with dyed pink hair and facial piercings among a sea of mostly white, Christian, conservative men.
There is no good reason to post your true opinions about anything even remotely controversial under your real name. I don’t know why people feel so compelled to do it. If I employed her in a position of public trust within the community, and firefighter is pretty high up on that list, I’d fire her too.
But the guy who led a mob to dox her is the worst: claiming some false pious burden while going against the literal commands of Jesus and stirring up hatred that would obviously lead to death threats against her and her family. It hardly comes as a surprise, though; that’s typical of Christian reactionaries.