After reaping horrific negative news coverage literally worldwide, as noted on this blog previously the Roanoke Athletic Club and Botetourt Athletic Club (in the Roanoke, Virginia area) changed their membership policies to allow same sex couples to join under a new "household" membership. Making matters worse, the clubs are affiliated with Carilion Clinic, the major hospital/heath care provider in the Roanoke area (it describes itself as "a not-for-profit health care organization serving nearly one million people in Virginia through hospitals, outpatient specialty centers and advanced primary care practices"). That such an entity would have anti-gay policies speaks volumes about the backwardness and bigotry that continue to permeate much of Virginia. And what's really frightening is that Roanoke is liberal and enlightened compared to the rest of southwest Virginia. A column in the Roanoke Times takes Carilion and its affiliates to task and notes the disservice anti-gay bigotry to the entire region and state. Here are highlights:
Carilion did the right thing last week by changing its ill-advised policy barring same-sex couples from joining the Roanoke Athletic Club and Botetourt Athletic Club as families. The pity is, it took 40 days, a lawsuit and a torrent of criticism to accomplish that.
By now the facts are well known. Will Trinkle, a real estate agent who's gay and is raising a child with a male partner, signed up for a family membership at the RAC on May 15. Nine days later in a telephone call, the RAC revoked it, under the reasoning that Trinkle and his partner didn't qualify as "a family." Carilion had claimed it was following Virginia law.
That was a crock, because Virginia law doesn't define the term "family," at least not yet. Nor has the General Assembly gotten around to prohibiting private businesses from granting such memberships to families headed by same-sex parents. (But give them some time. Del. Bob Marshall may be working on the bill as you read this.)
This brought the RAC more publicity than anything else in its history. And all of it was negative, aimed at a company that is by far the Roanoke Valley's largest employer. By extension, it made this region look like the kind of atavistic backwater that only the Rev. Fred "God Hates Fags" Phelps could be proud of.
Southwest Virginia desperately needs new businesses and industries. The type of media attention that the RAC debacle brought to the Roanoke area certainly did nothing to help the region's image or to attract progressive forward thinking businesses and the jobs they would create. Del. Bob Marshall and his fellow knuckle dragging Neanderthals in the Republican Party of Virginia may want to drag Virginia back into the 18th century, but that endeavor will not help most Virginians or attract the jobs areas like southwest Virginian need so badly. Once again Virginia has received a black eye in the world of national news coverage.
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