A gay couple and their daughter have been denied a family discount at a West Manchester, Penn. swimming club.
Writes the York Daily Record:
Michelle [Gladfelter] applied for membership at the pool and later received a call from owner Russ Jacobs. Jacobs told her she and her family would be welcome to join, but the discount does not apply to them.
“We don’t recognize same-sex marriages,” Jacobs said in an interview.
The reason, he said, isn’t political; it’s economic. He wouldn’t bar Michelle and her family or any other family from joining the pool. But Jacobs says if he gives the discount to Gladfelter, he’d have to extend it to grandparents, cousins—you name it.
Um, no. You just have to give the discount to families with heterosexual and homosexual parents, that’s it. Unfortunately, this particular township of Pennsylvania doesn’t have an anti-discrimination law on the books, so what Jacobs is doing is perfectly legal.
Hyhybt
Even if they did have an antidiscrimination law, Pennsylvania doesn’t recognize gay marriages as valid, so it wouldn’t matter.
Auntie Mame
Public pools are gross.
Phantom
@Auntie Mame: Amen to that. Plus who wants to be in same pool with bunch of screaming little children. That would drive me up to the f@cking wall.
The crustybastard
So it’s not a family discount, it’s a heterosexual discount.
Fuckers.
ray
And I bet if a straight-but-legally-unmarried couple came in with their children, they’d get the ‘family’ discount without insisting on seeing the marriage licence. If the kids call their grown-ups “Mom and Dad”, it is assumed they are in fact a family. So what’s the difference if the kids call their parents “Mummy and Mom” or “Dad and Pop” or whatever? A family is a family, all living together, grown-ups raising children. And what about single parents raising children? Would they get the family discount? They either honor all nuclear families (parents and children) or they don’t, whether ‘legally’ married or not doesn’t matter. As for economics, if they actually allowed all nuclear families they would likely get MORE patrons, and still increase their bottom line. Some fools never learn.
Prof. Woland
This is where things like spreading awareness, boycotts, and the like are most effective. It sounds like a private pool (requiring membership?)–and so the owners are within their rights to define their terms here and define who gets discounts.. but this also means that we are free to criticize them and make them suffer economically for being such dicks.
A bit of open and loud bad publicity on this score would probably get them to change their minds–especially if a number of families who were members signed something that they weren’t going to renew their membership because of this…
This is how we’ve won other places… and this is how we will win here..