BOZEMAN, Mont. -- While more and more people are signing up on Facebook to connect and share information with friends, thoughts and opinions some thought were personal are now being aired in public.

This has been the case for a few public figures in the state.

Tim Ravndal was removed as president of the Big Sky Tea Party and kicked out of the organization for his anti-gay Facebook postings.

Montana legislative candidate Jason Priest apologized for calling British economist John Maynard Keynes a "big homo" on Facebook. He went on to suggest that President Barack Obama was figuratively, painfully sodomizing America with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

"If you can have someone like the president of an organization saying really homophobic things on his website and considers it relatively private, there is a real disconnect in the role of our political identities as public people and private people, whether you can uphold that distinction anymore," said Sara Rushing, political science professor at Montana State University.

Last year Bozeman police administators disciplined one officer for posting a series of comments on his personal Facebook page, including one that said police should be able to arrest stupid people.

People we talked with at a Bozeman coffee house said comments posted on the internet should never really be considered private.

"If you don't want to share it you should never say it," said Chad Leonard, internet user.

The popularity of sites like Facebook continues to grow, which means people who post will have to think twice about just who is seeing what they have to say.