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| Konrad Juengling |
According to the Huffington Post, Juengling bought the domain names of State Reps. Martin Carbaugh, Dale Devon, Doug Gutwein, Kathy Kreag Richardson, Don Lehe and Donna Schaibley. Although many other lawmakers voted for RFRA, Juengling told the Huffington Post he only bought the domain names for these six lawmakers because the names were available for registration.
Juengling is using his ownership of the domain names to extort from the lawmakers their support for adding non-discrimination protection in Indiana's civil rights law for gays and transgenders. In a letter to the lawmakers dated April 10, Juengling says he will turn over control of the domain sites to the lawmakers if they help bring legislation to the floor of the House to amend Indiana's civil rights law, vote for it and it is signed into law.
Last week, he wrote to them and told them he'd be happy to give them their websites free of charge if they supported a statewide nondiscrimination policy protecting LGBT people.
"If you bring to the floor a nondiscrimination policy protecting LGBT people in Indiana, vote for it, and it is passed, I will happily donate the domains in question to you. I’m sure they’ll come in handy come stumping season," he wrote in his letter, which he shared with The Huffington Post.
He added that he decided to redirect the lawmakers' websites to the LGBT youth statistics to show them that the population that would be affected by RFRA "is already disadvantaged and have less accesses to family, community supports, and healthcare."
"A disproportionate number of homeless youth are LGBT; why would you support a bill that lets organizations turn these people away?" he asked.Huffington Post has a link to the full text of Juengling's extortion letter, which you can view by clicking here. Juengling, a Portland, Oregon resident, is a contributing writer for PQ ("Proud Queer") Monthly, a monthly print and daily online that serves Oregon's LGBTQ community.
11 comments:
In a word: reprehensible. As a member of the "out" Hoosier LGBT community, I am utterly ashamed that LGBT "activists" would use extortion as does this political agitator. The recent heightened level of Hoosier LGBT intolerance, hatred, bigotry, and bullying like little children to get their way when they fail at the ballot box or in legislative bodies is truly sad and highly disappointing. This behavior is more representative of the early 1900's leftist in tzarist Russia or despotist Germany than in America than in a Constitutional Republic. Oh, wait... the Constitution... something Congress and the White House ceased to be obligated to about a century ago...
Completely legal. Especially creative. And lets be honest. Its a token statement in a political world where the elephant in the room is an Indiana General Assembly with a supermajority. Not only are the Indiana house and senate completely dominated by conservative Republicans, but Indiana has a governor who claims to have never had a gay friend. Indiana has an extremely small gay population. Probably around 4% according to the most recently published Gallup poll, considered the best. Let the minority speak. People who hate the minority so virulently, they just don’t understand that there will soon be necessary, federal protections for this minority. Indiana’s supermajority slamming them over and over again, calling them horrible names, impugning their rights as human beings, it just leads the rest of the country to support protections, and it hurts the reputation of Indiana. Go on, scream how rfra doesn’t have anything to do with discrimination. But every time you really get conservatives talking, they claim its necessary to protect business from having to do business with “people” they don’t want to do business with. Everybody else calls that discrimination. Don’t call it extortion when small potatoes guys like Konrad decide to use internet tools like domain names to raise awareness. Its a gimmick. But its the only way the minority has to express its plight. A march here. An op-ed there. One or two business leaders speaking out on behalf of the minority. This isn’t a Koch brother throwing a billion dollars behind a cause. Its a boy, spending $35 a pop on domain names nobody wants to make a political statement against a huge government supermajority. The gay community needs some legal protections. Indiana’s supermajority doth protest too much.
REPEAL THE LAW IN IT'S ENTIRETY; END OF STORY FOR THE LGBT AND IT'S FIGHT AGAINST INDIANA.
"The means justify the ends" is what apparently intended by Anon 7:28... where the religion of left liberal Democrat policies takes precedence over moral and ethical behavior.
"Especially creative"... seriously?? Internet squatting has occurred for years and in many cases has been condemned or sometimes outright banned. Go look it up, it's true.
Anon 7:28 is typical of the hysterical, emotion based left liberal Democrats where common sense and a clear, cogent line of thinking is intentionally absent... where one has to willingly suspend disbelief to get through the diatribe of nonsense in the comment. As a gay person, I find the lack of truth and clarity in the moonies of the left liberal Democrat religion an aberration rather than the norm.
Interesting use of the word Extort.
If young Konrad had a few million dollars in his pocket to set-up some sort of PAC, contribute to political campaigns, hire people on his behalf, or even hire members of our General Assembly or family members and funnel money to them via the their "Day Jobs" he would be called a Lobbyist.
If Young Konrad had enough influence and political clout from Lobbying he might be able to stand behind the Governor with a big smile on his face as the Governor signed Konrad's Bill into Law.
One extortionist giving another set (politicians in the crony world) a taste of their own medicine. I like neither but this version of extortion at least doesn't make me pay for soccer stadiums and basketball arenas.
ANON 8:06 what "moral and ethical behavior" are you referencing??
I am getting old now. But I remember well my grandmother, a Hoosier since the earliest days of the State, from a family living here well before the civil war, who often said there was nothing worse than a bible thumper, even though she was considered quite a biblical scholar to her friends, and and was an educated woman who often read the bible well into the night for inspiration. She marked this passage, and I thought I would share it with you, because she often said Christians were hypocrites about their own sins, particularly on the subject of divorce, and she liked the passage about eunuchs, which she often felt included gays and transgendered people.
“When Jesus had finished saying these things, he left Galilee and went into the region of Judea to the other side of the Jordan. Large crowds followed him, and he healed them there.
Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”
“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
“Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”
Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”
The disciples said to him, “If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.”
Jesus replied, “Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others—and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.”
How soon will a GoFundme page be set up on behalf of this ignorant lawmakers? Let them fleece the rubes for enough money to start their own super PAC
So why are The Star's reporters silent on this extortion scheme?
Anything that doesn't fit Gannett's agenda never happened.
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