Posted on 03/29/2007 1:36:10 PM PDT by Jet Jaguar
(Sumter) - A gay couple looking to rent a hotel room say they were turned away because of their sexuality.
"She wasn't discreet about it," said Jason Pickel, referring to a hotel employee. "She was not apologetic. She just said, 'We do not rent to gay people.'"
For the past two and a half years, Pickel and Darren Black Bear have been in a committed relationship. During a search for a temporary home, the couple says it went to Affordable Suites of America, a long-term stay hotel located on Gion Street in Sumter.
"We were inquiring about the price, deposits, extra person fee, and she asked who the room was going to be for, and I said for my partner and I,” Pickel said. “She said, 'Oh we don't rent to multiple people of the same sex.' I said, so you don't rent to gay couples? She said, 'No, we don't rent to gay people at all.'"
The website for Affordable Suites of America states the company does not allow children or pets in its suites, but there is no mention of same sex couples.
News19 contacted the hotel, posing as a potential renter, and inquired about two men staying in the same room. The receptionist who answered the phone told us the following: “Our policy is we don’t rent to two people of the same sex if we only have one bed.” “Is that your policy,” we asked. “That’s corporate policy because they only have one sleeping area.” We then asked, “Okay, but they can't share the bed?” "I suppose they could, but most men don’t want to," she said.
However, when News19 called the owner of the hotel, Carroll Atkisson, he says there had been some confusion. He says any couple can come to the place and they will rent to them, period. Atkisson says the policy was not mean to target homosexuals. He says they were just trying to stop two single people from being in the same bed.
Pickel and Black Bear say they still plan to seek legal action. "Everyone is floored, shocked and outraged," said Pickel. "We have contacted some of our friends who are activists."
Currently, there is no state law preventing a hotel from refusing service to a same-sex couple. However, it is illegal to discriminate on the basis of race, creed, color, national origin, gender, disability, or marital status.
"If they have a policy, it has to be maintained fair and equitably," says Tom Sponseller, President of the Hospitality Association of South Carolina. "At the beach, for example, because there are different bike weekends at the beach, that policy has to be enforced, and consistent."
There is currently a bill in the State Senate that addresses this issue. The measure, proposed by Charleston Democrat Robert Ford, would expand the Lodging Establishment Act to include prohibition of discrimination because of sexual orientation or gender identity.
I've also heard, trying to put it delicately...that due to the nature of sodomy, and its lack of discreet limits...hotel rooms can, and often do, get seriously trashed (and become an actual biological hazard-- try not to think about it too much...ewwwwww....) after rental by homosexual men.
There are a multitude of public health reasons, besides the moral ones, why historically those who've chosen a perverted promiscuous sex life have been ostracized by civilized societies in the past. In the western world we're sowing our own doom in abandoning common sense by protecting and promoting sodomy.
I guess they didn't want to have that bucket of aids spilled in one of their rooms.
Used to be that way, not since the sixties though. The queers are using a familiar playbook.
You should take a fluorescent flashlight on your next road trip. Hotel rooms get seriously trashed by heteros too.
Ya' learn somethin' new every day, I didn't know Black Bears loved to 'eat' pickles.
Unless, of course, they were trying to "make a point".
Good for the hotel owner!
Anybody have any idea what this sentence was supposed to mean?
This hotel/motel is in interstate commerce and therefore the federal courts can easily get a piece of this action. State laws allowing or prohibiting are largely irrelevant.
Very few people understand this aspect of constitutional law, but one of the two critical court cases upholding the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was Heart of Atlanta Hotel v. Katzenbach (then US Attorney General). The USSC ruled that the hotel was in interstate commerce and, as such, the reach of the civil rights act extended to anyone who desired to stay at that hotel; the owners did not have the consitutional right to prohibit anyone based on race. In effect, the USSC ruled that the Civil Rights Act was constitutional b/c Congress had the authority under the Commerce Clause of Article I of the Constitution to regulate interstate commerce. One person, the court ruled, could have a significant impact on interstate commerce and therefore the statute was constitutional.
While sexual orientation is not yet a protected class under the Civil Rights Act, as amended, this case could be granted certiorari by the lower federal courts based on commerce clause or equal protection considerations.
Bike weeks at Myrtle Beach.
They weren't discriminated against because of marital status. The hotel operator said they wouldn't rent to to people of the same sex if there was only one bed. The hotel never asked what their orientation was, the couple volunteered the information.
It may be the hotel doesn't want to be overrun by illegal immigrant day laborers.
They should have gone for the double play and said they also only rent to married couples.
With names like that, I wouldn't be surprised if the desk clerk had a reasonable suspicion that they were about to shoot gay porn in one of their hotel rooms.
LOL!
There is an important difference between civil rights and the criminalization of personal morality.
Race, color, gender, and disability are off limits (as indicators themselves, not in any correlative or derived senses...). National origin too (but not citizenship). This is the domain of civil rights.
Discrimination based upon ANY action should be fair game. That would include creed, marital status, sexual activities (not sexual orientation, there is a difference), physical ability, mental ability, criminal background, wearing a blue hat, etc. This includes traits that are derivatives of things protected as civil rights (correlated manifestations).
There is a logical disconnect involved in the extension of "civil rights" protections to the point where individuals are shielded from the consequences of their ACTIONS, where any expression of non-PC morality and personal values is criminalized. Freedom from responsibility is not liberty. Freedom from all judgment is not liberty. By endorsing contrary notions, liberty is extinguished.
While the government should play no role in supporting or repressing actions that involve no involuntary loss of negative liberties of any external party (nor should it obviously involve itself in the provision of positive liberties, also known as privileges, services, materials), it should likewise not involve itself in the extinguishing of negative liberties of individuals who do not wish to extend, at their own expense, positive liberties to another party, based upon the action (or inaction) of said party. Positive liberties and government should never intersect; the primary domain of government is to protect individuals from the involuntary arrogation of negative liberties. That this has been "confused" with the provision of positive liberties, even when necessitating the involuntary denial of negative liberties, is the source for much societal decline.
I'm sure not all male homo's do the types of bizarre and sick perverted sexual acts,which will go unmentioned, but all male homosexual sex is by definition unnatural. Your rectum or mouth is not made for sexual intercourse
To think otherwise makes you either very naive or someone is lying to you
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