defense strategies

Hotel Owners Behind ‘No Gay Couples Allowed’ Policy: We Wuz Set Up!

Peter and Hazelmary Bull, the British hotel owners who refused to let gay (civil union’d) couple Martyn Hall and Steven Preddy stay in a room with a double bed because they’re gay, are the victims of a set up! They claim.

Facing a £5,000 discrimination claim by the couple, the Bulls say their religious beliefs prohibit them from letting two men lie down next to each other at their Chymorvah Private Hotel — or even one man and one woman who are unmarried. (That Hall and Preddy are as married as the U.K. will allow them to be appears besides the point.) Not only that, but the gay couple’s attempt to book a room with them (way back in 2008) was an intentional ruse orchestrated by the activist group Stonewall, they insisted in court.

Bernie Quinn, a hotel employee, says the hotel received a phone call from Stonewall informing them about new equality laws that would make their policy, which they’ve used since taking over the venue in 1986, illegal. So it was a set up then? “It is not beyond the realms of possibility,” says Quinn. “I have no proof other than the phone call. I cannot assume for them what their motivations were or weren’t. I assumed, going back to the phone call, that we were expecting a Mr and Mrs Preddy and what arrived was two gentlemen.”

Um. And if it was a set up? Then too freakin’ bad for the Bulls, and kudos to Stonewall. My only wish is that they had a couple of Flip cams to document the check-in process.

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