Paul Shepherd (R-ID) thinks the U.S. has the right to pass religiously motivated legislation. He’s wrong. He predominantly seems to think his personal religious beliefs justify a newly passed memorial in his state of Idaho that urges Congress to impeach any judge that rules in favor of equal rights for member of the LGBT community. Shepherd, obviously, was one of the majority voices in favor of such a resolution.
Check out his statement from just five days ago, when the resolution passed, below:
“We’ve gotta take a stand… You can’t say an immoral behavior according to God’s word, what we’ve all been taught since the beginning, is something that’s just, and that’s really kind what this is all about. We’d better uphold Christian morals. As an example, how about fornication, adultery, and other issues.”
Keep it classy, Idaho.
That’s the only notch on Shepherd’s belt, however. He also wants to give employers the right to legally discriminate against gay employees (libertarians have varying views on discrimination-related issues, granted, but let us all agree based on his rhetoric that this man’s motivations are not grounded in the same place as ours might be if we happened to share his economic view). Not exactly the most appealing or winnable platform in most places in the country, if the current wins for marriage in a vast majority of U.S. states are any indication, but somehow Idaho voted this guy in.
But don’t worry, equal opportunity lovers, for Congressman Shepherd has just gotten a major lesson in Taylor Swift Web Philosophy 101 – if you don’t want your website, or any similarly named website, to associate you with things you don’t wish to be associated with, get it on lock ASAP. Swift recently purchased several domains associated with her name so that porn sites couldn’t get them.
So, the license to Shepherd’s official website domain, paulshepherdusa.com, ran out recently, and who should come across it but pro-LGBT reddit.com user Dylan Hailey, who immediately “scooped up” the domain and relaunced the official Paul Shepherd website as – you guessed it – a pro-gay rights mega hub.
The new webmasters had this to say upon the front page: “[Congressman Shepherd’s] staff forgot to renew the domain this week, so we’ve done that for him and due to his recent attempts to discriminate against the LGBT community we’re countering it with this site.” They also have a direct response to Shepherd’s claim that good people need to “take a stand” on gay marriage:
“Yes, we do need to take a stand, against bigots who discriminate against people they disagree with or don’t like, just like what Paul Shepherd is doing to the LGBT community.
A local organization in Idaho, BetterIdaho.org, is trying to get Paul Shepherd to meet with the local LGBT community to help him with his fears of it. Please sign their open letter asking him to visit with them, you can find the letter here.
Another local non-profit, AddTheWords.org, is pushing for the state of Idaho to follow the lead of hundreds of companies and 21 states, by including sexual orientation and gender identity in discrimination protections. Most of the country supports this, even has Republican backing.”
There you have it, folks. A bigoted politician, a staff with poorly timed forgetfulness, and an activist who came along at the right place at the right time. Too bad for ol’ Paul, but at least we can all help him get his life right and prevent future cyberspace screw-ups like this in the future. All the dear congressman has to ask himself is: What Would Taylor Do?
So if one has the time, I suggest we all pay Paul’s Twitter page a visit and leave a friendly reminder in the form of #WWTD – after all, it’s reminiscent of his undoubtedly favorite person’s own vanity campaign – how could he possibly hate it?
p.s. Bug Ted Cruz about this, too, if you have the oomph for it.
