According to USA Today, Exodus has dropped its complaint against blogger Justin Watt, after Watt removed the Exodus logo watermark from his parody of Exodus’ antigay billboard that was titled, “Gay? Unhappy?”:
I think Exodus’ decision is sensible; even its claim of infringement against its logo was legally weak.
Exodus had lodged a related complaint against Ex-Gay Watch for republishing Watt’s parody. This web site was courteous enough to remove the parody during the dispute; I would have appreciated the courtesy of a direct notification from Mr. Chambers that the case had been dropped.
I don’t care much for gay.com, and so I was happy to see bloggers respond so creatively with alternatives. The following parody by Zortnac remains my favorite because it focuses squarely upon exgay activists who seem determined to impose their unhappiness and unanswered questions upon other people.
Meanwhile, Watt — the unwitting cause of all this controversy — seems to be enjoying the Bay Area media spotlight. He’s welcome to it!
Yeah, I read the letter sent to Exodus by the legal team representing the blogger. They didn’t pull any punches, and I would like to think that Exodus dropped the lawsuit because they got “spanked” pretty hard and were shown how their assault on free speech was just ridiculous.
Here’s hoping that Exodus soon shuts its doors and stops seeking to destroy the lives of people who happen to be homosexuals.
I ran across another parody that will give them heartburn.
https://www.biva.co.uk/html/ex.html
Congrats, XGW! Weak doesn’t begin to describe the Exodus/LC legal position, IMO.
Keep up the good work, btw.
Kuddos. And kuddos to Justin (and the ACLU and Fenwick & West).
Congrats to Justin Watt, the ACLU, and XGW for standing up to the religious right and defending our right to challenge the Exodus and the ex-gay promoters. The fact that USA Today publicized Watt’s parody will hopefully make Exodus & Co. consider the unintended consequences their intimidatation efforts may have.
Did anyone else notice USA Today’s description of Exodus as a “Christian group that promotes heterosexuality”. The writer, Jon Swartz, seemed to bend over backward to avoid calling Exodus ‘anti-gay’ or that it ‘opposes homosexuality’.