The first time Jessica Lundquist and Tiffany Steinberg ever showed their love for each other in public was on the Huntington Beach Pier two years ago when they held hands for the first time. It proved to be the start of a beautiful relationship they decided to share with the world via their now two popular Youtube channels under the motto love without boundaries. Sure, they dealt with online trolls and a man telling them they’d go back to men, but nothing like they experienced Sunday October 15 at the very place their story began.
They had just finished eating dinner and were walking along the pier around 9 p.m. when they decided to hold hands for a moment. As Lundquist took her phone out to Snapchat something, Steinberg says a man began quickly approaching her girlfriend from behind and Lundquist says “he got uncomfortably close…he said that we were ‘unnatural’ and we were going to hell for our actions…we were just trying to get away from the conversation.”
The video below shows the man continuing to follow them and express his views about their sexuality despite them repeatedly asking him to leave them alone. Steinberg felt he wanted to embarrass them and wasn’t sure if he was dangerous, so she began yelling “I’m gay” in the video as an attempt to get people to come help them. A woman approaches in their defense who then accuses the man of harassing them to which he then claims he’s a criminal defense attorney and harassment is a “very subjective term”. He then identifies himself, giving them permission to film him because he wants to get his message out but when they tell him ‘no one agrees with you’ he responds by saying, “they do actually, this is the Trump era and you’re going to see a whole lot of things changing.”
Steinberg instantly turns away in surprise and they finally manage to get away from him as they troll him about Trump. Give the video a play to see just how cringe worthy a dumbass Trumpbro can get. Steinberg says “it just shows maybe our president is invoking people to become more violent in person and come up to us in person for being who we are.”
“When he said that, it all started to make sense,” Lundquist says. “That was just like ‘ok, I don’t even want to get into this conversation with him’ and he at that point was just spewing out all sorts of things. I felt that just says a lot about where the countries headed…but based on the responses we’ve gotten online it’s been overwhelmingly positive towards us so I definitely feel better now than I did in that moment,”
After Steinberg posted the video online the same night, the man was identified by angry web sleuths as Irvine resident Anthony Allan Miskulin, a 38-year-old Trump supporter who was interviewed by the Los Angeles Times last November (ironically in an article about Trump supporters speaking about how they aren’t ignorant) and OC Register for his denial of climate change. He is in fact not a lawyer but told the LA Times he works in corporate sales and voted for Trump after falling on hard times. Before he managed to make his profile private, posts revealed he’s your typical Conservative Christian nut with his timeline full of Infowars videos and check-ins to local churches.
The couple isn’t the first people he confronted either, as a now private video showed him questioning a man on the bus October 3, 2016 as the man attempted to hide his face from the camera. His behavior can be traced to several posts condemning homosexuality as a sin and a meme he shared July 9, 2017 of a man pointing to himself with the caption “guess who’s going to preach the word of god whether you like it or not or get offended.”
“I’ve dealt with that guy before,” Facebook user Alec David Bauer commented on Steinberg’s post. “I got into a fat argument with him for this very reason [sic] he was giving two girls holding hands shit saying they are going to hell blah blah blah and then he told my autistic mute friend he was going to hell…he obviously didn’t know what was happening but I tore him a new one that day…this guy is a tool.”
With more than 60,000 views on Steinberg’s video, support has poured in everywhere from locals to Christians apologizing for the mans behavior and trolls have gone as far as creating a Facebook page to clown on Miskulin. Yet shit talkers have defended the mans actions and many people are finding various ways to blame the women for what happened, telling them to not be open about their relationship. Due to all the attention and responses, they made the video below where they fire back at haters and ask supporters to back off Miskulin since it appears justice has been served. They’re overall just shocked this happened, especially in Orange County but Lundquist says “I’ve always felt really safe here and always accepted, even the times that I visited before I moved here.”
“This is such an awesome place and this community is really supportive of us,” Steinberg says. “We had a lot of support from people totally understanding the situation that are residents here…I don’t know who he thought he was coming up to me telling me I was not welcome in the place I’ve grown up my whole life.”
The couple hasn’t filed a police report because they aren’t sure if Miskulins actions even constitute a crime and HBPD confirmed they haven’t received any calls about the incident. Miskulin has declined request for comment but he told Steinberg “see you in court” on her Facebook post despite giving her permission in the video to upload it online. She stands by posting the video and told the Weekly, “I wanted to publicly shame this guy so he knows not to mess with me or anyone else because it’s not ok to attack someone for being who they are.”
“We have to be able to be who we are in public and feel comfortable,” Lundquist says, “even if it means getting some strange looks or running into people like this sometimes. It’s never going to get better if we just hide away or we are afraid of the what ifs or if we’re afraid of these situations.’
