Is Citibank Homophobic, Anti-Startup, or Just Incredibly Dumb?

Here's one for the "brand nightmare" category: a major bank decides to close off access to a startup company's business accounts because of "objectionable content" on their blog. Really? In 2010?

If you're thinking, "WTF?" you're not alone. The company in question, fabulis -- a social network for gay men -- is a little curious themselves.

The controversy kicked off yesterday, after founder and CEO Jason Goldberg wrote a post on the company's blog, called "citibank is not so fabulis." According to the post, Goldberg and his team noticed that they no longer had access to their accounts, and when they called to figure out what was going on, they were told that the account had been closed due to their blog's "objectionable content." What's more, the account had been closed a few days earlier without any sort of notification. And worst of all, apparently Citibank is now reviewing the company to determine whether to terminate the account entirely.

There is so much wrong with this I don't even know where to begin. First of all, a bank closing an account because of objectionable content on a blog!? What country do they think they're in? How is that in any way relevant to a bank's business? Okay, if Citibank had to close an account because of suspicious money laundering to terrorists, that'd be one thing. But objectionable content? Are you kidding me?

Let's assume for a second, though, that we're living in an alternate universe and it's reasonable for a bank to turn off the spigot because of a company's blog.

What then might be an acceptable reason? I just spent a little while perusing their blog and there is nothing -- literally nothing -- that any normal person would deem objectionable.

With one big exception, though, because fabulis is a social network for gay men. It describes itself as "the network that connects gay men with amazing experiences down the block and around the world."

Now, homophobia is a much too pernicious and persistent problem in our world to make unfounded accusations. It is definitely possible that the site's content had nothing to do with the mysterious objectionable content that raised hackles. But discounting the site's audience as an explanation, the shutdown of fabulis's account remains, well, pretty inexplicable.

Whatever the case may be, Citibank owes fabulis their account back. And I think they owe everyone an explanation. Tell Citibank to get their act together.

Update: As you can see from the comments below and from the fabulis blog, Citibank has apologized and attempted to redress this situation directly with fabulis. I respect fabulis' desire to move on from the whole event. For my part, however, I'm still unsatisfied with the lack of an explanation about what policy got their account flagged in the first place. I believe the issue here isn't a specific instance, but Citibank's general policy.

Update 2 - Victory!: Over the weekend, Citibank revised and updated its policies about internet businesses, saying that it will continue to check at the outset that a company is not focused on gambling or pornography, but that it will not monitor content produced by its customer companies. Read the Wall Street Journal's writeup here or check out what fabulis had to say.

Photo credit: Mike McCaffrey