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NOM Just Started An Ugly Boycott Of Angie’s List And An Attack On Its Service Providers

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The National Organization For Marriage has just launched a war against Indiana-based Angie’s List, because it spoke out against a discriminatory anti-gay law in its home state.

For over a week, Indiana’s anti-gay “religious freedom” law has been the top news story across the nation, spurred in large part thanks to the courageous cries from companies like Apple, Salesforce, Elly Lilly, and Angie’s List.

For almost 20 years, Angie’s List has been headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana. The $315 million corporation which lets users review local businesses, especially home improvement professionals, had been planning a $40 million renovation of its own, moving its headquarters across town and adding 1000 new jobs over five years.

Until Governor Mike Pence signed the Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act into law. 

Angie’s List then canceled that $40 million renovation, and with it, the 1000 new jobs it would have brought.

Certainly a brave move.

Even after Gov. Pence called for an amendment to the RFRA to “clarify” that the law was not to be used to discriminate against the LGBT community, Angie’s List continued to raise concerns, calling the new language “insufficient.”

“Our position is that this ‘fix’ is insufficient,” Angie’s List CEO Bill Oesterle said in a statement. “There was no repeal of RFRA and no end to discrimination of homosexuals in Indiana.”

Oesterle, it should be noted, is a Republican and was the campaign chairman for Mitch Daniels, Mike Pence’s predecessor. He also  “donated $150,000 to Pence’s gubernatorial campaign,” the IB Times reports.

Of course, smelling an opportunity to expand its fundraising list, NOM, the National Organization For Marriage, has seized upon the call for equality and nondiscrimination from Angie’s List and today launched an ugly boycott affecting not just Angie’s List, but the service providers who list on the company’s website.

NOM calls the original anti-gay Religious Freedom Restoration Act a “common sense religious liberty bill that simply gives people of faith their day in court to fight government from coercing them to participate in something they oppose on religious grounds.”

Of course, that’s not correct, as the law before it was amended allowed for overt anti-LGBT discrimination. Even now, since Indiana has no nondiscrimination statute protecting LGBT people, anyone can still discriminate, they just can’t use the RFRA as a “get out of jail free card.”

NOM is claiming, “Angie’s List thinks attacking the rights of Christians and other faiths is smart business.” 

And they’re calling not only for Angie’s List members to cancel their accounts, but to randomly choose a service provider and leave a review that has absolutely nothing to do with that small business owner, making them “pay” for a negative review of Angie’s List.

“Leave one last review on Angie’s List of any company you like that makes clear that you are leaving Angie’s List because they oppose religious freedom. Encourage everyone else to do this same.”

How mean and ugly is that?

NOM, it should be noted, isn’t even being original. Both the Family Research Council and the American Family Association – two anti-gay hate groups – have already started boycotts against Angie’s List.

A spokesperson for Angie’s List would not comment on the boycott, and referred The New Civil Rights Movement to its CEO’s comments (above.)

One final note.

NOM has just removed its failed boycott of Chase bank, Void Chase, from its website. 

Since it started that boycott eight and a half monrths ago, NOM has managed to get all of 7424 people to support it:

void_chase.jpg 

 

Image, top: Screenshot via NOM

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Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation

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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.

Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”

“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”

In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”

He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”

“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”

“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”

“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”

The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.

“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”

Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”

Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.

Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.

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Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs

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President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.

“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”

The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”

Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”

TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”

Critics blasted Trump.

“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.

One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”

Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”

The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.

U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”

 

Image via Reuters 

 

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One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won

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President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.

According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.

Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”

“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”

Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”

Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.

Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.

The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.

“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.

The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.

“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”

 

Image via Reuters

 

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