The person who wrote this opinion column thinks the gay couple needs to "get over it." I don't think so. When employees a major American corporation think they can refer to their own customers as a slur, and then the company itself is not willing to fully rectify the matter, there's a problem. Let me remind you what took place, it was pretty bad:
On an August day three years ago, two gay men, Craig Person and Edmund Yang, took the "Psycho Mouse" roller coaster at California's Great America park in Santa Clara.How about if the couple were black and a Great America employee (is that still a Marriott company, by the way?) and the employee had posted a picture of the black company accompanied by an inappropriate racial slur, for all the world to see. Should they just get over it?
As the two passed through a dramatic part of the ride, a camera snapped a picture for a potential souvenir. It showed Person and Yang holding hands, fingers tightly entwined.
Once they left the ride, Person and Yang saw the photo at a kiosk, where an employee displayed it on a monitor. They declined to buy it, though Person took a shot of the photo with his cellphone camera.
Later in the day, friends of the two men saw a printed-out version of the photo hanging from a kiosk near the Loggers Run ride. A thought bubble above Person and Yang said, "Were (sic) Fags!"
Complaining about these kind of things is what makes things change. Great America should have been on their knees begging these guys to settle this case and make it go away. This wasn't just an insult, it was a public accommodations issue. It's about whether gay families are permitted to frequent the same businesses as straight families. And the way that law is made is by lawsuits about issues like this. Mocking the guys and their cause is ignorant.
