The Christianists always pretend to be "concerned about the children" even as their anti-gay policies and bigotry deliberately harm the children of same sex couples. The latest example of this standard practice of harming children to punish same sex couples took place in Roanoke, Virginia where the Roanoke Athletic Club rescinded membership to Will Trinkle and Juan Granados (pictured below) once their status as a gay couple was realized. The ultimate victim of the club's bigotry? Their young child. A similar situation arose in Norfolk a few years ago when a lesbian couple was denied membership in the Mallory Country Club. The couple had sought a family membership so that their daughter could swim at the club's pool with other neighborhood children. The Roanoke couple, unlike the Norfolk mothers, filed suit against the RAC and Carilion (which owns the club), claiming they applied for a family membership that was accepted and later withdrawn. As the Virginian Pilot reports:
In a statement, Trinkle said he'd been told by an unnamed Carilion representative "they were 'tightening policies' so no families like us would ever 'get as far' as we had."
The suit drew considerable public attention, including a petition posted on Change.org in support of Trinkle that today listed more than 50,000 signatures.
Faced with the lawsuit and withering negative national publicity, the RAC announced via Facebook that it was changing its policies:
Our goal has been, and always will be to encourage and inspire health and wellness among all members of the communities we serve.
In keeping with this goal, and in recognition of the many contemporary households that can benefit from our facilities through discounted membership fees, we are pleased to announce that we have expanded our Family Membership into a new Household Membership with the following criteria:
Household Membership:
A household consists of a primary member and up to one additional household member that permanently lives in the household, and any of their dependent children under the age of 22 who also reside in the household on a permanent basis.
Club dues will not change; dues for the Household Membership will be the same as the Family Membership it is replacing. There is no requirement to amend your membership, but should this change be advantageous to you, please contact our sales office. If we may answer any questions, do not hesitate to contact us.
Sadly some of the comments on the Virginian Pilot article demonstrate that there are lost of knuckle dragging bigots in Hampton Roads. The Gospel message of love of others and not judging others is totally lost on these self-righteous, self-congratulatory assholes.
1 comment:
On the surface this sounds a bit like a win, and I suppose it is progress, but at the end of the day, it was just a bridge to far for Carilion to treat gay families as equals.
OK, let's look at a couple of important points here. I'd bet a month's salary that this health club never required people seeking "family" memberships to show proof they were married. So this was never about people being in legal marriages getting that particular membership type. It was about gay families being excluded.
There's been no indication that the person who rescinded their membership has been fired, so Carilion actually supports the original decision. What does that mean, it means they are guilty of the most cynical kind of bigotry...bigotry of convenience. They were fine with it until they were sued, and started getting slammed with bad press. So they won't even stand by their princples, misguided though they may be. They caved when their pocketbooks were threatened.
But then, at the end of the day, they couldn't bring themselves to simply change the description of what sort of families could purchase a family membership, they had to change the membership plan altogether from "Families" to "Households." This smacks of separate but equal to me, but then again, we're talking about Virginia here, so that shouldn't surprise anyone.
Their PR guy wrote a wonderful letter which was so cheery, and made them sound like a great progressive organization, but just a little analysis of their response leads to an organization that did the least it could to diffuse a lawsuit. Hopefully the people of the area will see it for the cynical play it is, and punish this organization regardless...but that remains to be seen.
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