Dear Supporters:

It has been three weeks since the start of this petition, and the over 1700 signatures have gone a long way in keeping this petition in the minds of the reef keeping community. There are discussions happening on other forums (because any discussion of this issue is deleted from R2R), reef podcasts covering the issue, and social media is abuzz. Much has happened since this petition was started, and sadly, Reef2Reef & David Hammontree have taken actions to make things even worse.

To continue to encourage Reef2Reef to reverse course, please keep sharing this petition and consider contacting some of Reef2Reef’s sponsors to ensure they are aware of what is going on. Some may not be, because any discussion of this is very quickly removed from Reef2Reef.  Please feel free to use the suggested email text below to send to sponsors. Please fill in the info specific to you! You may also write something in your own words if you prefer.

All current R2R sponsors and their contact info can be found here.

Below the suggested email text is a timeline of significant events around this issue.

Thank you for your continued support!

Suggested Email Text for Contacting Sponsors

Dear Reef2Reef Sponsor,

Are you aware of the recent events occurring on R2R? The owner of the site is discriminating against LGBTQ people. I thought you should know as a sponsor of R2R, your support of the site may reflect that you condone this behavior. If you would like some more info, I would encourage you to check out this change.org petition (https://www.change.org/FairTreatmentAtReef2Reef). It captures a timeline of events which shows how the site owner is being disingenuous to his sponsors, including you. The actions being taken by R2R do not reflect what R2R has stated.  Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

<Your name here>

Timeline of Significant Events at Reef2Reef Discriminating Against the LGBTQ+ Community

Oct 11: ScubaEthan makes their queer intro post in the Meet & Greet forum.

Oct 12: ToS updated to include "discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity are prohibited".

Dec 17: Surfzone starts a LGBTQ+ thread in the Reef Aquarium Discussion forum.

Dec 18: The Surfzone thread is removed, and the "regarding a recently removed thread" statement is made to the site in the Reef Aquarium Discussion forum. This announcement is made in a locked and pinned post, drawing everyone's attention.

Dec 18: A rebuttal thread, "I love being discriminated against." is created in the Lounge forum by Inkgirl. This thread reaches nearly 10 pages in length in four hours, before it is removed from the site overnight.

Dec 23: ToS is updated to remove "discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity are prohibited" and restated to how it reads today (topics sexual in nature are not appropriate)

Dec 30, midday: David Hammontree explicitly states in the Lounge forum: "I don't care who signs a petition against me or R2R. The allegations are false and baseless. It's an attack from people who don't like me or have ulterior motives."

Dec 30, evening: A complete purge happens to the site, where old content with LGBTQ or related terms are removed from the site. A July 2019 LGBTQ thread in the Lounge forum is removed. ScubaEthan's intro thread from Oct 11 is removed. This material was removed to an "admin only" area of the site, where regular site moderators cannot access.

Dec 30, post purge: The "Who love's rainbows?" thread is created in the Lounge forum. This thread remains today but has been heavily moderated to remove any LGBTQ or related terms.

Jan 4: bluprntguy changes his May 2019 nano build thread title to: "bluprntguy's big gay rainbow nano". This change was quickly edited by site administration. Then, bluprntguy attempted to change his build thread title to “bluprntguy's nano (he’s gay, btw)”, which was also quickly removed by site administration. The thread title today remains reverted to "bluprntguy's nano".

Jan 4: “change.org” is added to the word filter, in attempt to prevent any further spread of the petition on the site.

Jan 4: User Bongo Shrimp posts the following in the Lounge forum’s prayer thread: “I would like to ask for prayers for the LGBTQ+ community and that they may stop experiencing discrimination and censorship. There’s too much hatred and divisiveness in the world today.” Two hours later, this message is removed from the site.

Jan 6: In the "private sponsor forum" (not publicly visible), a couple site sponsors begin to discuss receiving emails from customers about these R2R and LGBTQ issues and ask questions for David Hammontree to address.

Jan 7: The "private sponsor forum" is removed from view from the site moderators, leaving this forum only accessible to site sponsors and R2R administrators. The forum software add-on which allows users to see who is currently viewing a thread is also disabled, site wide.

Jan 7: David Hammontree addresses these sponsors and assures them "we are doing our best to mitigate this issue". When questioned about scrubbing forum content, he states: "What we're scrubbing is troll accounts and posts that are just here trolling the forum." "We are not deleting everything. Just the posts and threads of people who are creating multiple accounts and those who are not abiding by our TOS."