Julie Mauck is a mother, real estate agent, and parental rights activist, so it should be no surprise that she used her free speech rights to protect children in the community from pornographic material.
But the Georgia mother of four found herself the target of a cancel campaign by an activist who falsely accused her of equating all LGBT people to pedophiles.
Now, Mauck is fighting back with the help of the Coalition for Liberty, which supports individuals who find themselves the target of cancel culture. The group’s president, Doug Turpin, said there must be consequences when people spread lies that damage someone’s livelihood, which is what Coalition for Liberty aims to accomplish.
The Moms for Liberty activist had to fight against “false attacks,” according to Turpin, who spoke to the Washington Examiner via phone Thursday. His group is helping fund Mauck’s lawsuit against two LGBT activists and the group Athens Pride for their role in targeting her business. The defendants have until September to respond to the lawsuit, according to a search of the court database.
The targeting came after Mauck said sexualized books, such as Flamer, should be inaccessible to minors in the public libraries. The book “contains alternate sexualities, sexual activities, sexual nudity, profanity, and derogatory terms, violence including self-harm, and controversial religious commentary,” according to the lawsuit, which paraphrases BookLooks.org.
The books, according to Mauck, should be put in a section that requires adult consent. She made this suggestion last July at an Oconee County Public Library meeting, and the board agreed with her.
Because of this, Carmella Bonnano, who leads Athens Pride, began contacting Mauck’s broker and pressured him to drop her. So did someone named Felix Bell, who also uses the name “Fiona.”
Realtors must have a broker in order to conduct business in the state, so Mauck’s broker dropping her essentially froze her out of business for two months until she found another.
Mauck also faced an ethics complaint filed by Bell with the Georgia Association of Realtors based on the false allegation that the mother of four called all LGBT people pedophiles. Both the video of the meeting and half a dozen witnesses debunked this claim.
Yet, the hearing panel, composed not of attorneys but real estate agents, said Mauck had violated rules against “discrimination in real estate transactions.”
There was no proof an actual person in the LGBT community had faced discrimination, and an appeals panel overruled the decision.
Turpin said the “head of the initial panel showed up” to the second hearing and “acted like a prosecutor.” This was “highly unusual,” he explained.
“He literally said, ‘The truth does not matter. Feelings matter.’ And then he claimed that pedophiles were a protected class,” Turpin said. “It was astounding.”
The cancel culture campaign is not simply part of activist free speech, Turpin said, because the allegations are false.
“We support free speech,” Turpin said, but “what they don’t have the right to do is to lie about somebody in order to harm them. And that’s what they did.”
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“If they are trying to destroy someone with a knowingly false accusation in order to defame them, or get them fired from their job, that’s the type of cancel culture that we believe can’t be permitted,” Turpin said.
If the cancel campaigns are to end, he added, there must be consequences.
Matt Lamb is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is an associate editor for the College Fix and has previously worked for Students for Life of America and Turning Point USA.