The unearthed posts show a pattern of homophobic language and rhetoric that mocked or demeaned LGBTQ+ people. In some cases, Platner appeared to use slurs casually in discussions unrelated to sexuality; in others, he explicitly framed gay people as the punch line.
In June 2016, Platner wrote in a thread about life on military guard duty, “No, seriously. Flog that fucker as often as possible … write gay poetry about how gay your current job is … Congratulations! You’ve made it through one shift! Now do it all again in 12 hours. Welcome to the world of standing post, where sanity is a sliding scale.”
In March 2018, he recounted in explicit detail what he described as a “gay off” between Marines and British sailors in Bahrain: “Pull into Bahrain in ’07 on a MEU, a Royal Navy submarine happens to be in port at the same time. … Before we even realize what’s going on, the other weird bastard just leans down and licks the damn thing from the bottom of the ballsack all the way up to the top of the dick. Stands up, looks dead at us and yells ‘BEAT THAT!’ … I proudly withdrew our team on the grounds that one cannot play gay chicken if one is actually gay.”