Mexico conservatives to sue over gay pride Twitter hacking

MEXICO CITY (AP) - A socially conservative Mexican political party is threatening legal action Friday after someone hacked the Solidarity Encounter Party's Twitter account and posted the gay pride banner and the slogan 'œLove is Love.'ť

The party, whose slogan is 'œFor Life And The Family,'ť is linked to evangelical churches and opposes gay marriage and abortion.

To rub it in, the tweets included hashtags for two states, Baja California and Sinaloa, that recently passed laws approving same-sex marriage.

The party said late Thursday it has recovered control of the account, which now appears without the tweets from earlier this week.

It called the tweets 'œa lack of respect for our institution'ť and vowed 'œwe will continue with legal action against whoever hacked our social media.'ť

Twitter users, however, loved the now-missing tweets, giving them over 4,000 retweets and 22,000 'œlikes.'ť

The party, known by its initials as PES, is in a tough spot: in most parts of Mexico it did not reach the cutoff of 3% of the vote in the June 7 elections, meaning it will lose its registration and government funding.

Adding to those woes were reports that the hacking - which also replaced the party's purple emblem with a rainbow-colored one - occurred because the group had not paid the person who manages its social media accounts.

The party seemed to acknowledge that, but denied it was to blame.

'œWe repeat that the alleged debt owed to the Community Manager is not the fault of the PES, but rather of the contractor, with whom there is no debt,'ť the party said.