US: Activists hijack anti-gay politician’s website
Idaho state representative Paul Shepherd has had his official website hijacked and turned against him.
Mr Shepherd made a resolution earlier this month calling to impeach federal judges who supported same-sex marriage. This drew the attention of student Dylan Hailey, who discovered that Mr Shephard’s website was due to expire – so he bought it.
Visitors are now greeted with the words: “His staff forgot to renew the domain this week, so we’ve done so to make this site more useful”
The site contains links to information about Paul Shepherd, as well as links to political campaigns and an open letter to Mr Shepherd, inviting him to meet with the LGBT community.
Mr Hailey told Motherboard: “I read about him on Reddit last week when he pushed that resolution urging Congress to impeach judges that don’t agree with his policies, and then wanted to look more into him.
“When I went to his campaign site I realized he had not renewed it, so I called up my registrar and got it first. He likely bought it for an extended period of time and forgot to renew it or the staffer in charge of it forgot or quit.
“We are working on designing one big site that will be a resource for everyone to look up their local or national elected officials, have their contact information, their stance on policies related to equality and privacy, controversial bills they’ve sponsored.”
Mr Hailey says if Mr Shepherd asks, he can have his website back – but not without doing something positive for LGBT people first.
“I would love to see him make a donation to an LGBT rights group. If he did that I’d gladly give him his domain back right away. f he refuses but wants to buy it back anyway then all the proceeds would go to an LGBT group, likely a local one in his area.”
