TQS Staff
In both the Daily Mail and the BBC website yesterday was an article about a lesbian couple who were, according to the pair, refused admission into a hotel “because they were gay”. I’ll agree, on first sight, the article seems shocking, and harks back to the controversial incident where a Christian couple refused a gay couple entry, but a closer examination of the couple’s argument reveals that this is not just a “simple” case of homophobia.
While the couple seem convinced that the hotel owner was explicitly homophobic in denying them a night’s stay, the hotel owner is adamant that the women’s sexual orientation had nothing to do with their admission refusal. The owner, who has not been named in either article, explained that the couple were “loud and abusive”, and that it was this which was an issue. The hotel, according to the owner, accepts many gay couples, since it is situated in Britain’s “gay capital”, Brighton, and the owner explained that if there was an issue with homosexuality, the hotel would have been situated somewhere else. I’m not saying that I’m taking the side of the hotel’s manager, since I do not know exactly what happened, but neither am I automatically taking the side of the gay couple for the reason that I am a member of the LGBT community.
What I will say, based on what I have read, is that taking advantage of being a part of a minority in order to obtain financial gain is only going to breed resentment. As we know, the media loves a story with a negative representation, so when the paublic read stories of LGBT groups taking legal action at each misunderstanding and overreacting to incidents which would be arguably better to maturely ignore, it will just make it more difficult to be considered truly equal.
By Roisin Morrison
