I received this letter today from the State of Connecticut Attorney General’s Office, and I am currently trying to contact them and set the record straight. Meanwhile, I thought I’d share this with you so you’d have some idea as to why I cashed the check.

Dear Mr. Nickerson:

Save the Children, a charitable organization based in Westport, Connecticut, has advised us that you are using its name on your website without its permission. Specifically, Save the Children complains that the puellula.com site contains a press release concerning its contribution to Save the Children. Pursuant to the Connecticut Solicitation of Charitable Funds Act, Conn. Gen. Stat. Sec. 21a-175 et seq., it is a violation of law for “any person to use the name of a charitable organization . . . without the express written permission of the charitable organization.” I have enclosed a printout of the objectionable page from the puellula.com website for your information.

As you should now recognize, you misconstrued Save the Children’s initial acknowledgment of the donation – that Save the Children accepted the donation “despite the prevailing antipathy against girllovers,” and that this receipt constituted a recognition of your organization’s “commitment to aiding the empoverished children of the world” – are wrong. Save the Children knew nothing about your organization, the donation was returned. Your attempt to convert or construe initial acceptance of your donation as an implied endorsement or recognition by Save the Children is unfair and inaccurate.

The donation has been returned to you. The fact that your organization has apparently decided against cashing the check in no way changes the fact that the contribution has been refused and therefore is not counted as income by Save the Children. Your continued posting of a press release that announces the acceptance of the donation is therefore a willful misrepresentation of the facts.

For the foregoing reasons I urge you to immediately remove this press release from your website. Your failure to do so may result in the imposition of civil and criminal penalties. Thank you for your attention to this request.


Sincerely,

RICHARD BLUMENTHAL

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The letter included a copy of the press release from Lindsay’s website. Anyone care to point out ALL the incorrect information in the letter? First and foremost, IT ISN’T MY WEBSITE!!! I have absolutely ZERO control over what goes on Lindsay’s website. Secondly, their accusations are provably false—not only do not own, operate or have ANY connection to what Lindsay posts on his site, the check HAS since been cashed, for precisely the reasons given in this letter—I foresaw something like this occurring and took the initiative. NOW perhaps you doubters will not be so quick to judge my intuition. I correctly assumed there would be trouble if we left the donation and I was correct.

Furthermore, because my name was on the check and the letter I submitted, they are now assuming that Lindsay’s website belongs to me! I will be the one who will be punished, and for something I have nothing to do with! Now, those of you who have insulted me for cashing that check, I have just this to say—imagine yourself in my place. Yes, I am asking for you to empathize with me here. If you had foreseen something of this kind, would you not have made the same choice? Secondly, I decided to make the donation an anonymous one because I do NOT care to go through any of this crap again. I made a choice that I felt was in the best interests of myself, the community AND the children.

I HOPE I can get this straightened out before I get embroiled in an unnecessary and ridiculous legal maelstrom over something as silly as trying to send money to help children. If you all have ANY more doubts that the world does not care about you, does not want to associate with you, and your “cause” is only setting us BACK, then you are willfully ignoring the evidence right in front of your eyes. Please, for everyone’s sake, get a clue, people. I want nothing more to do with it. Let this be a lesson—while you sit and accuse me of being an anti, despite ALL I have done for and in the name of this community, the REAL antis will destroy whomever they can in order to further their own agenda. You will lose valuable allies by alienating those who do not agree with your agenda in full. I isn’t simply unwise to do this; it demonstrates to the world that you will sacrifice your allies in order to further your own ends. In short, it makes you look cold and uncaring, not to mention immature. NOW you might understand a little better where I am coming from with my accusations!