TRICKERY

Palm Springs Theater Owner Exposed For Making Major Donations To Anti-Gay Politicians, Prop 8

Tucked away in Palm Springs is a movie theater complex called Camelot that shows mostly quirky indie films, hosts the local gay and lesbian film fest, and takes money from gay people to give to horrible politicians.

The news broke this weekend on a local blog, where a lawyer unveiled the results of a little campaign finance sleuthing. The theater’s owner, Rozene Supple, has made a series of contributions over the years that read like a checklist of people who don’t like LGBT people.

Michelle Bachman? Yep. Proposition 8? Yes indeed. Allen West? Oh yes.

(We have to admit that there’s a part of us that misses Allen West, the super-crackpotty politician from, naturally, Florida, who lashed out at Lady Gaga for calling America “home of the gays.”)

And it gets worse: According to attorney Robert Tansey, who dug through Supple’s donation records, she was more than a little sneaky about how she donated to Prop 8. Initially, she listed the money as coming via her homeowner’s association. The record was only corrected after the association received a large volume of complaints, Tansey reports. (Conversely, we wonder how Bachman and West would react to her upcoming hosting of The Palm Springs Gay and Lesbian Film Festival?)

So, now that we have this information, what do we do about it? Well, there’s always the possibility of a boycott. Supple’s free to spend her money on nutty causes that hurt her own patrons–just as the people of Palm Springs are entitled to withhold theirs from her.

The optimal outcome in a situation like this would be an apology from the donor, a promise that it won’t happen again, and a big donation towards marriage equality. Might we suggest an amount at least equivalent to all the combined money she’s given to antigay causes? That’s what a Gold’s Gym franchisee in San Francisco did after it came out that the CEO of Gold’s supported a Karl Rove PAC: the franchisee cut all ties with Gold’s and donated a ton of money to local LGBT causes.

Will Supple follow suit? It certainly wouldn’t hurt to ask.

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