Two “Big Bad Bears” Have Hijacked JebBushForPresident.com To Start A Conversation About LGBT Issues

This week, former Florida Governor and long-time neglected little brother of George W, Jeb Bush announced his intention to take a run at this whole being Leader of the Free World thing. On Monday he unveiled a logo ©Microsoft WordArt 1997, yesterday he did a peppy little speech officially declaring his candidacy, and all the while the rest of the world collectively shrugged.

Sure. Why not? This seems like something that would happen.

Goldilocks Bush: My dad invaded Iraq too little. My brother did it too much. I'll invade Iraq just right!

— LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) February 18, 2015

But two Americans in particular, CJ Phillips and Charlie Rainwater, have been waiting patiently for this moment for some time. Not because they support the politician or his policies, but because they bought out the domain JebBushForPresident.com seven years ago in anticipation of this moment. All this time they’ve been using the site as a platform for a discussion of LGBT issues, and now with his Republican primary nomination officially announced, they’re excited to get more people involved.

Also, they’re completely adorable:

Somewhat different from the pictures of grinning old Mr Potato Heads which greet you on Jeb Bush’s official website, the alternate address from Phillips and Rainwater delivers a wholesome albeit totally unrelated message about compassion. “Let’s have a chat, share viewpoints, and learn from each other,” it reads. “So many times we find ourselves in situations where we can’t relate to each other, don’t understand each other, or feel like there’s nobody who wants to listen to our point of view. Let’s change that.”

When you dig a little deeper into the site, it also features essays about things like youth suicide and workplace discrimination — issues which directly affect the LGBT communities at large, but also the men themselves. CJ was in fact dismissed from the US Air Force after 10 years of service for his sexual orientation when the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy was still in effect; a matter he talks about at length in the above video.

Notably, the site barely mentions Jeb Bush at all aside from a small section explaining why it exists in the first place. Here, the men recall some Texan legislature passed in 2008 which threatened the legitimacy of civil partnerships. As few people in their lives fully understood what this meant for them, they started the website with the broader goal of education rather than ridicule or attack. Though the former Governor is outspoken against marriage equality and has controversial conservative beliefs about family, pegging the site to Jeb Bush was just a way to get people talking.

“Simply put, he was pretty vocal about not extending rights to LGBTQ peoples, and the domain name was available,” they write. “Honestly, he’s got family connections, a whole lotta cash, and a political party behind him … We’ve got the internet and a couple of hours a day outside of work, school, and tending to the household. This is how we’re trying to make a difference.”

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In other news, on the surprisingly compelling beat of Jeb Bush’s web presence: though his real site’s been up for less than a day, a journalist from The New York Times has already discovered something phenomenal about it. For reasons which are way more fun to leave a mystery, the web developers inserted summaries to all five Die Hard films deep in the site’s source code.

Seems like an odd thing to include in the JS of your presidential announcement page. https://t.co/bA8DeSzeyk pic.twitter.com/vwfUbBLt0M

— Jeremy Bowers (@jeremybowers) June 15, 2015

Though the odd passage has since been deleted, The Guardian report that it also featured a number of offhand comments about each film such as “[This one’s] also starring Severus Snape”, “Not that bad a sequel”, “Another one 12 years later”, and “Please God just let this franchise die”.

So. You know… Good luck against Hillary, Jeb! The campaign’s off to a great start.