Is the Internet Too Complicated for Conservatives?

CYBERSPACE—Remember when the late Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) described the internet as a "series of tubes" that can get "filled up" if you put too much information into them? Remember how politicians of all stripes (but mostly conservatives) didn't (don't!) seem to understand that when you say something in public that you wish you hadn't, you really can't "take it back" by claiming you hadn't said it because YouTube? Remember how 2016 presidential candidate Carly Fiorina launched her campaign without first securing what is likely to be one of its most important parts: the URL carlyfiorina.org? Yes, mix conservatives with the internet and the chance they'll provide fodder for endless late-night talk show humor nears 100 percent. The most recent whoopsie was committed by the incredibly anti-gay Open Door Baptist Church of Easley, South Carolina, whose congregants have a tendency to haunt the parking lots and other open spaces near rock concerts (most recently, the "Carolina Rebellion" festival) carrying anti-gay signs with snappy slogans like "There Is No Relief In Hell," "America: God Hates Your Sin" and "Sin & Shame Not Pride"—and all sporting their church's URL, WarningsOfWrath.com. That is, it was the church's URL until Pastor Randy Bryson, who'd used it for his blog, let it lapse a while ago, and an enterprising Imgur user bought it and used it ... to direct anyone who clicks on the URL to the gay porn site ScaryFuckers.com. "They condemned gays and rock music outside Carolina Rebellion," HuffingtonPost.com quoted the anonymous owner as having written in an Imgur post. "I bought the (unexpectedly expired) domain from their signs and pointed it at gay porn of people who probably like rock music. Fair?" Eminently! In fact, it's such a good idea that we wondered if anyone else had tried anything similar—and they had! For instance, there's Konrad Juengling, the human rights activist who was a bit upset at Indiana politicians having passed, and Gov. Mike Pence having signed, the much-reviled Religious Freedom Restoration Act. What to do? What to do? Well, fortunately, Juengling was reasonably tech-savvy, so he bought the dotcom URLs for six of the Indiana Republicans who'd voted in favor of the bill—Martin Carbaugh, Dale Devon, Douglas Gutwein, Kathy Kreag Richardson, Don Lehe and Donna Schaibley—and had those URLs redirect visitors to the anti-discrimination Human Rights Campaign website—and then he wrote a letter to each of the politicians. "I recently purchased the domains for each of your names," Juengling wrote. "To be honest, I was surprised that these were not already purchased, since all of you are elected officials having run political campaigns. ... The domains for each of your names now forward to the Human Rights Campaign’s page on Youth Statistics. ... Why did I forward those domains to that page? To show you the population you are trying to further undermine 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? ... 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." Juengling sent his letter on April 10, so it might be too soon to expect the requested bill to have been drafted and put up for discussion—but on the other hand, this is Indiana we're talking about; not exactly a bastion of free thought and acceptance. And finally, you may have heard that George W. Bush's bro Jeb Bush has announced his candidacy for the presidency—and therefore, you might have expected that he'd already own the website JebBushForPresident.com. Ha-ha, silly mortals! Nope, that website was bought in 2008 ... by CJ Phillips and Charlie Rainwater, a happy gay couple who planned to use the page "to prompt understanding, insight, and healthy dialogue in the ever changing landscape of civil rights and social justice." "Tentative plans were to essentially blog about how we felt about various legislation happening nationally and worldwide," Phillips recently told Business Insider in an email. "We didn’t see LGBT equality getting any better, and we felt said rights would more than likely still be in the spotlight in the run up for the next several election cycles. Jeb's name was already being bandied about in the news as a potential presidential candidate, and we felt sure he’d be running in a future election." Oops; tough luck, Jeb!