From Heroically asking DeWine Tough Questions…to Pampering a Contentious Renacci Vote

March 22, 2022
7:44 pm

And the "T" in LGBT means ...?

EDITORIAL: Getting into a journalistic crossfire with renowned reporter Jack Windsor, of the Ohio Press Network (OPN), is something I never thought I’d be doing, but these are odd times. Last Tuesday, he’d printed a response (1) to my 2/24/22 Ohio Election Forum (OEF) article (2), a notice about an attempted contact, and a comment by 2022 Republican Gubernatorial candidate Jim Renacci, presumably directed at me and my OEF article.

FIRST, looking at the rehashed political issue: I can’t find in Mr Windsor’s 3/15/22 OPN editorial where he cohesively or directly refutes the report I made on 2/24/22 (which was annotated with sources).

His is a lengthy column which I find, regardless of a claim to be neutral, to be focused on debunking the nuances of 2022 Republican Gubernatorial candidate Joe Blystone’s independently-derived claims, but even Mr Windsor admits toward the end that, “one could argue that the code on facility segregation may have been an issue the Obama administration would have tried more aggressively to enforce through federal agencies.”

The OPN article begins with attention-getting innuendo regarding OEF, and strikes a colorful jab at my content and/or Joe Blystone’s own content on this issue as “constitutional law jiu-jitsu”, while then proceeding with Windsor’s own grand-master form of “constitutional law jiu-jitsu” to try to break down Mr Blystone’s claims.

Mr Windsor also prominently features a letter from various Renacci advocates, broadly stating, “Claims that Renacci supports transgender issues are FALSE AND LIBELOUS.” If that’s so, then Mr Windsor himself apparently committed libel when he published a quote from Jim Renacci himself, regarding his recollection of May 2016 and former colleague and Congressman Maloney:

[“He is a gay congressman who was working to add sexual preference and gender identity to protected classes, so that people couldn’t be fired for being gay or transgender … (Maloney) was trying to show where Republicans stood on the issue LGBT rights —so some Republicans got together and talked about it,” said Renacci. “And, you know what, some of us realized this was about hiring and we didn’t want to not hire someone or fire someone because they are gay, just as you wouldn’t if someone is black or a female. As far as being the only Ohio Republican who voted for the amendment, …”]

One can’t help acknowledge the irony of someone admitting in their very own words, what their defenders are saying is outright beyond plausibility. Let’s not forget what the “T” in “LGBT” stands for.

Let me summarize what led to all this back-and-forth, if you haven’t previously read my OEF article or Mr Windsor’s OPN editorial:
• In 2016, Jim Renacci was a Congressman.
• In May 2016, Renacci voted against an amendment to a Bill.
• In May 2016, a week later, there was a water and utilities bill HR5055 with the same/similar amendment offered by openly LGBT Rep. Maloney, which Renacci voted FOR.
• Other amendments were made to HR5055 which arguably mitigated some of Maloney’s amendment, but HR5055 never passed.
• Since at least July 2021, Joe Blystone has claimed the amendment Renacci voted for in 2016 supported transgender bathrooms.
• On 2/22/22, WHK Radio host Bob Frantz interviewed Mr Blystone, and claimed he couldn’t find any evidence to back up Blystone’s claims about Renacci’s 2016 vote.
• On 2/24/22, I published an OEF report detailing that Mr Renacci did vote for the Maloney amendment on HR5055, how it would’ve stopped HB5055 from being used to defund or impede President Obama’s 2014 Executive Order (EO) 13672, which in turn was the lynchpin on the equal availability of bathroom facilities for federal contractors, and also had become a federal labor agency recommendation in general.
(I’d noted that it was Frantz’s improbable assertion that stirred me to do the research.)
• On 3/15/22, Mr Windsor (who provides political correspondence for WHK) published an editorial for OPN, debunking Mr Blystone’s claim that the Renacci vote (FOR the HR5055 amendment) would’ve led to Federal defunding of States who passed laws opposed to ‘bathroom choice’.

It boggles my mind that such effort is being applied to defend a painful vote cast by a politician, instead of just, “Yeah, it was a bad vote, and other Republicans who voted ‘Yes’ on it took heat, too.” Even Mr Windsor points out in his article that Republican Congressional Representative Jim Jordan did NOT vote for the Maloney amendment. He then claims to have reached-out for a comment to Mr Jordan’s staffers, as if it’s a big “mystery” why staunch Republicans like Jordan refrained from voting for an amendment that would’ve effectually helped codify Obama’s activist EO 13672.

(BTW, this debate so far has been focused on the 2016 Maloney amendment, but both Mr Renacci [YES] and Mr Jordan [NO] voted the same way a year before, when there was another bill and a similar LGBT-supporting amendment to it.) (3) (4) (5)

Mr Windsor brings up some nuances in the timing of the amendments-to-the-amendment (Maloney’s), and states that “Renacci said amendments to the Maloney amendment provided religious protections that were not available on the issue at the time…” While that’s true, I’d like to also point out that the specific ORDER of votes (6) I had in my 2/24/22 article was correct. While I didn’t mention the somewhat superfluous adding of a reference to the 14th Amendment in the vote for the Maloney amendment, that vote was part of “Roll no. 258”.(7) The Byrne amendment 1130 to HR5055 was “Roll no. 259”,(8) and happened AFTER the vote for the Maloney amendment concluded. 1130 was the amendment that stopped funds from being used to controvert religious convictions. So, YES: Renacci voted for that, too. Correct. But, he FIRST voted for the LGBT protections prior to the religious protections being introduced. (This is just based on the chronology of the factual Congressional Record. Whether or not there were ‘handshake deals’ going-on along with these votes, that would all be subjective history at best.)

Something not well touched upon yet was the political climate in 2016 at the time of the Maloney amendment vote. There’s been some reference to North Carolina’s HB2, but other significant events happened just prior to the Maloney vote on May 25, 2016:
• On May 12, 2016, the Obama Administration sent letters to schools across the Nation, demanding transgender bathroom choice. (9)
• On April 19, 2016, Target announced it’s “choose your own bathroom” customer policy.(10)
• On March 24, 2016, HB2 passed in NC, which prohibited “gender choice” bathrooms, to stop municipalities such as Charlotte from allowing it. (HB2 has since been repealed, due to aggressive LGBT advocacy and judicial activism.)

Many online references characterize events in the spring of 2016 as the spearhead of the transgender ‘bathroom rights’ timeline. (11)(12)

Mr Windsor’s own OPN research includes a reference which I believe supports my research that Executive Order (EO) 13672 had ALREADY been underpinning the ‘rage’ for transgender bathrooms, since December 2014. He writes that: “The rule as interpreted by the Federal Contract Compliance Programs Office and the code of federal regulations regarding the Obama order states, “To comply with its obligations under the Order, a contractor must ensure that *FACILITIES* provided for employees are provided in such a manner that segregation on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, *SEXUAL ORIENTATION, GENDER IDENTITY*, or national origin cannot result.”” (*my emphasis)(13)

A New York Times 2017 article confirms that it was the Obama Administration (Attorney General Eric Holder, in particular) who in December of 2014 took the position that “Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 applied to claims of discrimination based on gender identity.”(14) It should be noted that his statement was released on 12/18/14, just days after the Department of Labor issued the Final Rule on EO 13672 on 12/9/14, which Mr Windsor referenced.(15)

Mr Windsor also characterizes Maloney’s view as he “was attempting to get Congress to pass protections that can be reversed by any president with the stroke of a pen and without congressional approval. Having the protections codified would require an act of Congress to undo them instead of an executive signature.” Well, a reminder is needed here: An Executive Order is NOT a law. President Obama is the one who manufactured all these new “LGBT rights” to begin with, literally via “the stroke of a pen” with EO 13672, and the Department of Labor further established them by fiat, with the Dec 2014 Rule published without public commentary, and AG Holder’s legal opinion derived out of the blue.

Since doing this research, I’ve become MORE convinced, not less, that EO 13672 is the real legal genesis for all of the heavy LGBT activism and “bathroom rights” we’ve seen in the last decade. This story is about what’s true, and less-relevant to what a certain Gubernatorial candidate believed when he cast the vote 6 years ago. It’s opened my mind to realize that there are so many complex things transpiring every day in the seat of Government that we are unlikely to understand the real implications of, unless we look at them very closely. Honestly: One of the best things Americans could do is to pass amendments to the Federal and ALL State Constitutions that automatically expire Executive Orders upon the end date of any official’s term.

The crux of my original OEF article was merely to state that EO 13672, and its interpretation and implementation by federal labor agencies, had ALREADY been the cause of increased implementation of ‘transgender bathrooms’ throughout the Nation. So, a vote to protect funding for, or otherwise shelter EO 13672, was a vote to protect everything that went along with it (whether known to Mr Renacci or not).

Mr Windsor goes through a lot of effort, getting into the weeds over why Mr Blystone’s deeper claim could be wrong (that the Maloney amendment could’ve resulted in federal defunding of States with statutes against bathroom choice). Mr Windsor makes convincing arguments regarding North Carolina, since he refers to the specific language added to protect HB2 in amendment 1115 to HR5055, but overall I’m not entirely sure that it wouldn’t have caused havoc in other States not specifically mentioned (and from what he admits in writing, I don’t think he is, either). It wasn’t the direct point I was making or a focus of my organic research. I believe my claim is much simpler to understand, as I’ve listed above.

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I would like to address some superficial things that Mr Windsor printed which referenced OEF. While he did leave a voicemail late on Sat 3/12/22, we unfortunately didn’t review the message before he went to print. Nevertheless, his message did NOT refer to WHY he was calling: only to give him a call. His message addressed ME directly by first name. That’s because he knows who I am. I saw him photograph me at the Ohio Republican State Central Committee on 12/8/21,(16) and I actually spoke with him afterward with a story about Ohio election systems we thought he might be interested in (the “we” being on behalf of one of the current Admins in OEF who had done the research, before the idea for OEF existed). Mr Windsor and I traded phone numbers. I gave him my card which listed my Americans Taking Action and Church of the Exempted websites. I sent him the elections info. Pinged him a few days later; never heard back. Ironically, this experience was part of what made me think of the idea for OEF, a week or so later: A curated public social media group at it’s core, but also an organization that might become more than that: willing to get into actual journalism, not just public comments in the digital ether. Anyway, if Mr Windsor really wanted to contact me, and lost my personal number, he could’ve pinged me on Messenger like most people do. But, I do apologize that we didn’t review the OEF voicemail in a more timely manner.

Mr Windsor quoted Jim Renacci in his story, presumably directed at me and my article, claiming that I was “a guy with no background and no history”.

I guess it’s time I publish a little more history about myself on the OEF site that is easy to get to, probably transferring some of what I write here.

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Some things about me:

• In Nov 2016, I started my conservative & faith-based “I am Damonous” YouTube channel and Facebook Page.
• In Mar 2020, I started writing Daily Prayers on “I am Damonous”, when I saw pastors go silent or become C-19 propagandists.
• On Mar 17, 2020, shocked that I couldn’t stump for a Republican candidate at the closed polls, I sent an email to every Ohio State Rep. demanding the immediate impeachment of Governor DeWine for halting the election, and unconstitutionally closing businesses.
• I was at the Statehouse protesting the mandates on May 2nd, 2020.
• On Jun 2, 2020, I physically removed myself from a personal relationship that the Lockdown made less-reconcilable, not more.
• In July 2020 until DeWine’s mandate was done, I fashioned a mask out of burlap with a piece of laminated paper on front declaring, “Only Jesus Saves”. I only wore it to avoid ‘store squabbles’, but NEVER wore double masks.
• In Sept/Oct 2020, I drove in the Trump Trains with my top-down and flags waving.
• In Oct 2020, I added Weekday Live Prayers to my “I am Damonous” page, which I do to this day.
• In Nov 2020, I started managing the private Facebook group “Ohioans Removing DeWine’s Emergency Rules” (8k members, now), and started a small weekly “Roundtable” video call which exists to this day, and is the basis for the Admins of OEF. (Not counting a couple of beloved members we lost to ‘C-19’ or the Hospitals –you decide.)
• I was in DC on the 6th, but NOT in the Capitol.
• In winter/spring 2021, I attended mask-mandate protests.
• In February 2021, I formed Americans Taking Action LLC.
• I organized protests at the mass-“V” clinic at Wolstein Center in Cleveland on three occasions, including when it opened on St Patrick’s Day.
• In July 2021, I launched the website ImpeachDeWine.net
• In Aug-Nov 2021, I led protests at Summa Akron and MetroHealth Cleveland every week for 2 months, until their “mandate deadlines” passed.
• I was to every public HB248 hearing in Columbus, culminating in my pro-HB248 testimony in Aug 2021.
• In Sept 2021, as an ordained minister registered in Ohio, I formed Church of the Exempted, extending my ministry to help over 150 people (to date) fight the evil and unconstitutional demands of their employers.
• I’ve been to the last three Ohio Republican State Central Committee meetings, bringing “No Endorsements!” signs when it was possible.
• In Nov 2021, I became part of the Liberty Action Network.
• Throughout 2021, I attended or organized 100 (?) pro- medical freedom, anti-CRT, anti-abortion and anti-DeWine protests, driving across the great Ohio on my own dime, because that’s how much I want my people to be free.
• When I’ve been on the streets, it’s been boldly out front, with a mic in hand and sign slung around my neck, reminding people not only about the freedoms that they should fight for, but that God wants them to stand up now, and be blessed.

• And there’s more…

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…So, “if” Mr Renacci was referring to me: No, I probably don’t have his kind of “background”. But, he probably doesn’t have my kind of “background” either, so I guess we’re even. I may be a “nobody”, but the Lord in heaven knows every hair on my head, as He does everyone’s.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article/editorial is solely my thoughts and independent research. No one asked me or paid me to write the prior article or this one. Ohio Election Forum LLC is my own creation and to this date funded only by me, with some helpful ideas, input and content from others. I won’t rule-out that you might see a “donate” button on the website, someday. I’ve met several candidates, major and small, at protests and events over the last year. Challenging candidate statements when necessary, getting to know everyone, where they stand, and what office they’re running for is literally what the concept of OEF is about. Any conservative candidate who’s running for office in Ohio can join the Facebook Forum and have the privilege of pre-approval to post top-line, while observing content rules, and that offer stands to Mr Renacci…even to Mr DeWine.