This post has been updated to reflect Brian Klawiter’s conviction on assault and battery charges and for parole violation.
After the owner of Indiana pizzeria Memories publicly declared she wouldn’t make her pies for same-sex weddings, she raked in well over $800,000 from a GoFundMe.com fundraiser. Eager to get in on the action, or at least to share the limelight and maybe be interviewed on Fox News, Michigan bigots are now oozing out from the rocks under which they live to be larger-than-life idiots in front of cameras.
First we had, Brian Klawiter, the owner of Dieseltec auto repair who decided it would be hilarious to publicly ban homosexuals from his shop while giving a discount to people who walk in packing heat.
The owner of a West Michigan auto repair shop announced on Facebook he wouldn’t hesitate to refuse to do business with openly gay customers.The post, published Tuesday morning on Dieseltec’s business Facebook page, says openly gay people aren’t welcome and homosexuality is “wrong.”
However, gun-carrying customers are allowed at the Grandville business at 2875 Ottawa Ave. SW, the owner said, adding people who bring their firearms will receive a discount.
That discount doesn’t extend to on-duty police officers because “because that’s not their gun,” he said.
The owner said Dieseltec will run in a manner that reflects his Christian values. He started the note by saying conservative rights are “squashed” every day.
“Apparently if you are white (or close to it), you have a job, go to church, and own a gun… That translates into racists, privileged, bigot, conspiracy theorist.”
It never fails to amaze me how little about the actual words of Jesus Christ these people asserting their “Christian values” seem to know. His ultimate commandment to love each other as He loves us (hint, He loves EVERYBODY) seem to have no traction with the average bigot. In fact, the less they represent true Christian values, the more eager they are to get themselves in front of a camera, it seems.
Funny thing about Brian Klawiter, though: he has a hard time obeying the law. He has refused to apply for a business license in Grandville where he lives in violation of the law:
The auto shop owner who posted on Facebook that he would refuse to serve openly gay customers does not have a city business license, according to Grandville administrators.Brian Klawiter earlier this year told the City Council that requiring a license violates his constitutional rights because it authorizes city inspectors to enter his property without a warrant.
“This is a blatant and intentioned violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution,” Klawiter told the council on Jan. 26. “I dispute your lawful ability to do what you claim. I will not sign the application. I cannot and will not give up my civil rights, especially when requested by a government entity for which the Constitution was designed to limit the power of. […]
Grandville notified Dieseltec that it needs to get licensed, prompting Klawiter to attend the meeting at which he objected to the licensing.
“We don’t usually run into this,” Meines said. “Usually they’re cooperative and do it.
“We’ve sent him all the paperwork and all the forms. It’s really in his court to come in and take it out. We’ll have to decide what way to go if he doesn’t.”
But that’s not all. This small-minded attention whore also hasn’t bothered to renew his mechanic’s license and has been working on cars illegally since last fall:
Brian Klawiter, the Grandville business owner at the center of a firestorm of controversy because of his Facebook post that he would deny service to openly gay people, has not been a legally licensed mechanic in Michigan since Oct. 12, 2014.Fred Woodhams, spokesman for Secretary of State Ruth Johnson, says the mechanic’s license expired in October and has not been renewed.
“Performing auto repair work as an unlicensed mechanic is a misdemeanor offense,” Woodhams tells Between The Lines by email.
But it doesn’t stop there. Klawiter was convicted of assault and battery in the 1990s and then again for violating his parole in 2001. A real upstanding citizen patriot, this guy.
Next comes the racist attention whore who works for Robert’s Discount Tree Service in Livonia. The owner of this fine establishment decided to put up a Confederate flag and a noose in front his home. When people complained, one of his employees put up another noose to piss them off even more. The owner, Robert Tomanovich, fled when a reporter tried to ask him some questions. Not so for one of his socially-stunted employees:
When 7 Action News reporter Jonathan Carlson approached Tomanovich for comment, he quickly went inside. Instead, one of his longtime employees at the tree service talked.When asked if he thought the nooses were offensive, the employee replied, “No not at all. I love it.”
In fact, he admitted he was the one that hung the second noose. The employee said it was hung in retaliation over the complaints.
“Screw ’em,” he said of those offended.
When asked if it would come down? “Hell no.” He added, “We’re gonna put more up.”
Then, to top this story of intellectually-challenged racists off with a true bigot cherry, Tomanovich’s wife had the audacity to claim, and I swear I am NOT making this up, that the nooses were a celebration of Tomanovich’s friend who had recently committed suicide by hanging himself.
Tomanovich’s wife, Lindy, then came out and explained the meaning behind the noose.“Robert has a friend that died in that way (hanging himself), and that’s in memory of his friend,” she said.
She said her husband’s family is from the south and they like the look of the flag. She added it is not meant to be racist.
“Well maybe they got too much time on their hands,” she said about the complaining neighbors. “There’s no crime in hanging a noose.”
Right, because it’s a well-known tribute to those loved ones who have hung themselves to hang nooses in your yard next Confederate flags, one of the most obnoxious symbols of racism and bigotry that you can still legally sell in stores.
You have to wonder why someone would go to such great lengths to prove to the world that they are racist and then deny it when someone asks them about it.
I had hesitated to write a single word about either of these idiots. They represent such a tiny fraction of the good people of America. They live small lives, frightened by the big world around them that is constantly evolving, learning, improving, and growing while they remain in their fetid lives of hate and anger and fear. They want nothing more than to be meaningful and important when they are, in fact, neither, not in the big scheme of things.
But it’s worth writing at least a little something to show them for what they are: tiny, insignificant specks trying like hell to be something, anything more than the sad excuses for humans that they are.
Unfortunately for them, the notoriety will quickly pass. Sean Hannity will stop calling to have them on the show after he uses them to crank up the night’s ratings. And then they’ll go back to their tiny,meaningless lives, content to sit around with their pals, tossing around derogatory names for all the people that scare the hell out of them in their small world.
Meanwhile, the rest of us will move on, content to shake our heads at these pathetic creatures we share our planet with, knowing they have reached the zenith of their lives by appearing on television as “that one small town bigot who hates gays” and “that one racist dude who thinks it’s still the 1800s and that racism is a hoot.”
Enjoy your limelight, fellas. It’s not going to last long and you are NOT going to be making $800,000 on GoFundMe just because you are a bit more outrageous than the bigot before you.
You are, at the end of the day, utterly insignificant.
[CC image credit: Michiel | Flickr]
