Gravatar Removes Posts

This is a strange problem and after googling for an hour, it appears that there isn’t much out there on the topic.

I have Gravatar enabled for my blog. After seeing someone on a forum requesting support with a Gravatar problem, where once you disable the plugin your posts disappear, I went over into my wp-admin and de-activated Gravatar to check it out. Sure enough all of my posts disappeared.

Can you explain how to disable Gravatar without losing your posts (and exactly why disabling Gravatar would remove posts in the first place?)

Thank you,

Kate