Just as with the Bristol Post newspaper earlier this year, so the Somerset Live website has this week hit back at anti-gay internet trolls who beseiged their comments threads with homophobic posts after a report appeared on Bath Pride, which spread joy to the beautiful city in the Somerset hills on August 22nd. "ShoutOut" is a safe space for LGBTQIA people as is community radio more generally, so we will not be republishing any of the remarks here. Suffice to say that many were violent, insane, unhinged, and spoke to the deep personal anger of a few privileged heterosexual and cisgender people. Phoebe Hobbs, who covered Bath Pride for the Somerset Live website, said "Most of these Facebook accounts included the posters' full names, photographs, even where they worked. They chose to 'come out of the closet' with their hatred, as it were. We are not naming them today, though we could do and it's something our sister titles have felt compelled to do. People can and do change for the better, but your ugliest moments recorded in the press could follow you around for the rest of your life. We see it time and again with people begging us to take down court reports and crime stories. I sat with my feelings for a while, reading these comments wishing terror attacks and fatal illnesses on people they had not met and had not done them any harm. One thought kept resurfacing in my mind. Happy people don't do this."

Phoebe concluded that the commentators hatred underlined their own self loathing. She noted that the joy that Bath Pride brought to participants and the city alike was far healthier than trolling online. LGBTQIA activists welcomed the stance taken by Somerset Live, but some urged the naming and publicising of the trolls' identities where given, so that employers could see what disrepute these people brought with them, and take action appropriately.