...Thornton was fired from his lucrative, high-profile job simply for (supposedly) being a MAP and talking to other MAPs in a perfectly legal MAP-friendly chat room that has been around for well over a decade and has never had any issues with law enforcement? Not for doing anything illegal? Not for actually doing anything outright lewd like approaching and blatantly flirting with underaged youths in a public setting? Just for allegedly being a MAP and talking to other MAPs? And of course, "lewd" can be rather subjective depending upon the opinions of who witnessed it or consensus societal belief in a given era. As recently as the 1970s, Thornton would have gotten similarly fired if he was discovered to be vanilla gay and talking to other gays about mutual issues.

Listen, I spend exactly 24 hours of every single day pretty much pretending I'm not a MAP via no behavior that would indicate I was. That's what I must do to keep a job and stay out of jail. But now I'm not allowed to simply talk to fellow MAPs in perfectly legal chat rooms either? Of course, Thornton was foolish for going in Lifeline in a public venue, as that wasn't pretending hard enough not to be a MAP, I guess.