Wednesday 7 April 2010

Big Gay Al's Big Gay Non-Smoking Hotel.

The gays hate the Tories, allegedly. This is, of course, overhyped crap from a 'pressure group' whose existence depends on gays being an oppressed minority. Keeping things in perspective is not on their agenda because that would put them out of a job.

Chris Grayling did not say that gays should be rounded up and thrown off a mountain. He did not propose banning gay people from every form of accommodation in the land. He certainly did not condone any direct action against gay people.

All he said was that the owner of a private business should be allowed to choose who they admit onto their premises. Oh, that's a good one. Private business owners can decide who they let in. We've heard this song before. But that comes later.

The owners of a certain B&B, one that is all over the news and the blogs, are in big trouble for refusing entry to a gay couple. They didn't want any gays on their premises and the gay pressure groups, and even the normally sensible Iain Dale, are furious. The police were contacted, the press had a field day, commenters on Iain Dale's said 'I'm not gay but I wouldn't go to a place that practiced such discrimination' and everyone had their handbags ready for combat.

Right. Here's a deal. This B&B is a place that does not allow gays to stay in it. If I can name one place that does not allow straight people to stay, will you hysterical queens at Stonewall and Attitude just chill?

Deal?

Right. Here it is. Found via that hardly-a-friend-of-yours, Old Holborn.

That hotel advertises as being for gay men only, no wench-chasers allowed. They can advertise that they don't want the likes of me in there. Nobody minds. Hell, I don't mind. I don't care at all and in fact, I appreciate them telling me. If I was going to Blackpool and booked a room, then turned up on the last train in the middle of the night and found they didn't want me because I'm not gay, I would be seriously pissed off. I have slept on the streets in the past but it wasn't pleasant and I'm far too old for such things now. I'm past fifty despite the prediction of every Righteous in the land. I am an apprentice old git and working hard for an A in gittiness.

Okay. I have no problem at all with someone setting up Big Gay Al's Big Gay Hotel and openly advertising 'No Leg-irons' so what is my point? As usual, it's convoluted and there are more than one.

That roundly-condemned B&B despised by Iain Dale and supported by Chris Grayling should also have been able to advertise 'Straight people only, no bum fun in our house thank you very much' but if they did that, the Discrimination Nazis would have come down on them like a ton of KY jelly. It doesn't hurt but it makes a hell of a mess. They are not permitted to do what the Guyz Hotel is allowed to do and that is where I have a problem.

I also have a problem with this:

Says Todd: “If Cameron wants gay people to believe his party no longer views us as second class citizens then he can’t have a shadow home secretary who clearly believes we are.

If you are a second class citizen, then what am I? You can have a gays-only hotel and openly advertise as such. I cannot have a smokers-only room. If I do, I will get this.

“It's encouraging that we haven't come across this problem before, but if anyone else is operating or thinking they can get away with operating an illegal smoking room, then this case should send out a strong warning to them. This offence carries a maximum penalty of a fine of up to £2,500."

An. Illegal. Smoking. Room. Nobody complained, nobody was even slightly inconvenienced, but it is illegal to let a smoker onto your private property.

Yes, it is illegal to have a smoking room on private premises but if you are gay, you can make your entire premises gay-only. If you are Muslim, you can make your private business baconless and Halal. I have no problem with you doing that. The problem is that I don't have that right. In fact, I am seen not as a second class citizen but as scum. Utter filth. By all the main parties out there. What is more, my lifestyle choice is heavily taxed. Is there a gay tax, a Jewish tax, a Muslim tax? Is any other group paying extra, exorbitant taxes just to be treated like something a politician's undersecretary stepped in?

It is time to get seriously nasty. If gays can advertise gay-only hotels and Muslims can advertise Halal-only restaurants, why is it that smokers are only seen as 'a problem'? Why is it that ASH, who still demand extension of their Final Solution smoking ban, don't care if a female smoker is raped because she had to stand outside, or a nurse is stabbed to death because she had to leave hospital premises for a smoke? Why? Because as far as you bastard antismokers are concerned, we don't count. We are filth and it's just fine to push us all as far as possible from the doorways where we could call for help and you are all delighted when one of us is attacked. You love it. You revel in it. You cheer on the rapist and the killer. You might even be the rapist and/or killer. We are only smokers. Not like you. Not like real human beings. You Nazi filth.

You don't like the smell. That is your one and only argument. That is it. It is all you have.

It is the argument put forward by a four-year-old presented with boiled cabbage. You are arguing as a child and it's no surprise in a world where if someone photographs themselves holding a knife and posts it online, you shit yourselves. You useless, feeble, mindless morons have accepted every single lie put to you and you are ready to make us sew yellow stars on our clothing. Look at yourself. Really look. It's not a pretty picture but try. Most of you can't do it because you are not reclaimable as human and are now eternally Nazi. You might as well vote National Front, you are the same. Exactly the same.

Not liking a smell does not do you harm. You are so weak that you consider a mere inconvenience as something deadly. You are happy to see women raped and stabbed to death so that you are not inconvenienced by a smell you don't like. You are in fact delighted that those things happen to another human being for no other reason than that they smoke. You are happy about that. Consider the implications. If your atrophied mind can cope with such complexity.

And you call smokers 'scum'. The mirror tells you the truth.

You want respect? No. You are beyond redemption. You are beyond reason. You are not worth the effort of explanation because you are incapable of reason.

The smokers are coming back and we will show you exactly as much respect as you have shown us.

As for all the other minorities, expect nothing from us. You are not paying to be treated badly. We are. And you don't like us either.

On the other hand, if you are willing to put aside your disgust of the smoking ghouls, we will listen. You don't like us, we know that, but if you want an alliance against a common enemy, let us know. Just remember that should we win, we smokers will no longer accept second class status.

Remember. Smokers pay excessive tax for something they are not allowed to do anywhere at all. We cannot have 'smoker's hotels'. We cannot even have a room. Soon we will not be allowed our own homes. And we are paying for this repression.

You ally with us, you ally with a group who has nothing more to lose. In any alliance, we call the shots.

I doubt there will be any takers. They're all too scared to play this game. For now, smokers have to work one way and one way only.

For ourselves.

50 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm actually a non-smoker but I have to say I agree with you.

almighty said...

well said that man!!
they will probably say the attacker stabbed her because they didnt like the brand she smoked and it was her own fault for being a smoker!

Man with Many Chins said...

Cracking post mate :-)

Captain Ranty said...

You had me at "The".

Another damn fine post.

We all understand the tedious divide and conquer rule now. If some don't, it's because they aren't paying attention.

It's time to unite.

Our day cometh, and it cometh right fast.

CR.

Anonymous said...

Did you not notice that Guyz hotel advertises a smoking room
http://www.guyzhotel.com/rooms.html

jimmy said...

Anon...

I think fags are allowed in every room.

knirirr said...

... if you want an alliance against a common enemy, let us know.

If the common enemy were to be defeated, what then? Recent posts suggest that you'd like to be able to light up where and when you pleased, non-smokers with their whinging about a mere smell be damned. Is that it, or are you engaging in a propaganda campaign with the object of shifting the middle ground? If the latter, and you are interested in some sort of non-state mandated, peaceful accommodation with non-smokers, what would it be?

Letters From A Tory said...

This whole story is just such nonsense. Since when have hotels not discriminated in some form against lots of different guests?

Uncle Marvo said...

I'm a heterosexual white working male cider-drinking smoker with no disabilities, but I have a minor allergy so I suppose I *am* a minority, but I agree with you too.

Anyway, what's wrong with chucking people off mountains?

I think if everyone was gayoid then the population problem would be solved, and very quickly too.

And what Ranty said. He is on some sort of drug at the moment, I think, and I want some of them. Did you supply them?

Tomrat said...

Leg-iron,

The owners of a certain B&B, one that is all over the news and the blogs, are in big trouble for refusing entry to a gay couple.

Taken out of context that sentence adopts a more metaphorical stance expected from the likes of Old Holborn.

As an ex-smoker (my then-girlfriend-now-wife disliked the smell, and I appreciated touchy-feely time more than smoky-farty time) I agree with you freely.

An unexpected victim noones mentioned- non-smoking pubs pre-ban; brilliant one in Headingly that sold real ale and food; now just a tiny room with lots of miserable people drinking stella and carling.

John Smith said...

Interesting post, not quite sure about this though:

"Most of you can't do it because you are not reclaimable as human and are now eternally Nazi. You might as well vote National Front, you are the same. Exactly the same."

Do we have a National Front Government that has introduced legislation banning smoking, or is it the National Front that has indoctrinated and conditioned the people in their response?

Must be missing something.

DaveA said...

Leg Iron, this is an outstanding piece of writing.

Of course smoker hate is all state sanctioned from Sir Liam Donaldson.

'But if we want to go further we have got to reinforce all these other tobacco measures and denormalise smoking completely,'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2007/jun/24/health.smoking

Anonymous said...

If I,as a smoker,can be subjected to exclusion and bogotry whats wrong with passing some of the
pain around to other minorities.

Can the bloggers please refrain
from mentioning that cyber disease,
Dale,the prat is just a mauve
dipstick.

SPQR

budgie said...

'If I was going to Blackpool and booked a room, then turned up on the last train in the middle of the night and found they didn't want me because I'm not gay, I would be seriously pissed off.'

LI, you could always pretend to be gay and pray you're not asked to prove it...

Actually, I reckon a lot of folks pretend not to be smokers and have thus been forced to hide in the recently vacated closet.

JuliaM said...

And now, emboldened, they are even seeking to change history...

Newsflash, chum - what you did was an offence back then. Unless your cab is a DeLorean, you don't get to go back and alter it!

Uncle Marvo said...

JuliaM

Correct, it was an offence, but a bloody stupid one. I am a smoker, if a cab driver wouldn't take me I'd call him a few names but I wouldn't sue him, nor would I allow anyone else to press charges on my behalf.

You may be able to change history. Gordon is trying to even as we speak (see over at Subrosa's place).

Mark Wadsworth said...

Agreed.

But what if Big Gay Al's Hotel was "gay smokers" only???

Dick Puddlecote said...

Bravo, Sir! Bravo!

The Merry Man said...

Hi Leg-Iron,

Great post,weve got troubles here in Nottingham, Burnham canvassing and using smokers as the bogey man.

Anonymous said...

I am a non-smoker and don't particularly like the smell of cigarette smoke,
but I'm on the smokers side on this one. In actual fact on the recent anti-smoking day I went and bought a pack of cigars for the second time in my life.

This issue is, of course, much bigger than smoking, because what is being lost is liberty. What is needed is for all those who love liberty to start finding common cause and to start standing up for each other.

It is fortunate that we have a national history that includes giving a black eye to all kinds of tyrants! Brassbanjo

Anonymous said...

Wonderful rant, Leg-Iron - and I agree completely!

Anonymous said...

fantastic rant. I am a smoker but I hate smoking if that makes any sense. I don't blame folk for not wanting the smell in their house, but by the same token some perfumes and body odours are far worse, should we ban them? Lordy, that means my husbands feet can't enter any building..

jfdi said...

apparently the only public place where smoking is allowed is the houses of parliament. Four legs good, two legs bad?

JuliaM said...

"And it shouldn't have been. His taxi - his rules."

I totally agree.

But that's not the point. Those were the rules then.

"...it was an offence, but a bloody stupid one. I am a smoker, if a cab driver wouldn't take me I'd call him a few names but I wouldn't sue him, nor would I allow anyone else to press charges on my behalf."

Me too. But thios was an offence against the state, it didn't NEED someone to allow them to press charges.

What the cabbie wants is to be able to go back and say 'There were the rules then, and they shouldn't have been the rules. Therefore, I want them expunged.'

Our law doesn't - shouldn't - work like that.

JuliaM said...

"I don't blame folk for not wanting the smell in their house, but by the same token some perfumes and body odours are far worse, should we ban them? "

Well, the US is waaaaaaay ahead of you there...

David Davis (Libertarian Alliance) said...

We old geezers, over at the Libertarian Alliance, have always maintained (Sean Gabb has been slightly more forgiving but is changing now, under pressure from reality) that these "Righteous" - as you aptly call them - do these things __/on purpose/__ _//because//_ they are wicked and evil and (a priori) beyond redemption and thus unfit to be considered as humans, but only as "Nazis".

They do not try to do "good things" because "they think they are good" and therefore everyone _/must/_ comply. We now say that they do these things utterly-because the things are in themselves evil, and that evil must be done, in order to restrain "good". To our way of thinking, their definition of evil invokes a need to restore "neutrality" to the Universe, as a place in which the existence of Mankind and his consciousness and selfhood and perception of the same Universe around him will have counted, at the end of time, for naught. That is to say - it would be as if "we", conscious sentient rational Man, had never been. A negaion of creaion, if you will. (I am NOT a "creationist" but a retired molecular biophysicist, since you ask (or not).)

I wish I could think of a more effective peijorative common-noun than "Nazis", but at present I can't. It is the abiding tragedy of the German People in modern times (most of whom have been and still are functionally-blameless) to have been burdened with such a word, coined by some of themselves for innocent shorthand reasons from the NSDAP-acronym. They failed to not vote for psychopathic murdering socialist-intellecto-droids, adumbrating people like Mao-tse Tung and Pol Pot, who then led them by force to disaster with millenarian faux-neo-pastoralist illusions.

I did not intend this reply to be a commentary on the nature of Good and Evil, into which it has developed. But I think that old Legiron ought to consider this sort of thing more in his otherwise very sound analyses.

The anti-soclialist-anti-spambot-thingy says "NOMAN". I wonder if this is a message from cybercreation, about what our enemies want from the universe?

scouserugger said...

I'm gay and have never smoked but I couldn't agree with this post more. I wouldn't be surprised if militant Christians start storming gay only hotels quoting the law and demanding a roof over their heads. The likes of Stonewall are now just Liebore apologists and are a fucking embarrassment to the majority of us gay fellers who just want to get on with our lives without wearing pink and baring our arses at every opportunity.
And smokers will turn out to be the most oppressed people of the 21st century unless they do something and are quick about it. The effects of passive smoking is just another pile of shite on the scale of global warming, it's just another way to control the masses and another cover for back-door (no pun intended) fascism. If we can stick our dicks where the sun don't shine and get the law on our side then surely you lot can for fuck's sake. I mean get the law on your side. Not the other thing, obviously....
Get organised, smokers !

Captain Haddock said...

I'm a Pipe smoker & have been since I was just over 17 ..

Every room in my house is a "smoking room" .. and anyone who doesn't like that can stay outside ..

And God help the first twat who attempts to make me alter my chosen lifestyle in my own home ..

That also applies to the first idiot who dares to beard me about it on my own doorstep too ..

Anonymous said...

JuliaM

Why could the potential passenger not have refrained from smoking in the cab?

He was not being denied passage because he was a smoker, but because the driver was asthmatic.

Entirely different issues. (I might've understood your message - if so, apologies).

Anonymous said...

Sounds like war to me !!

I like winners, so I will back the smokers.

Anonymous said...

PS: might I suggest that you get a post to facebook widget? It would surely help to spread your message.

Jimmy Freedom said...

It's times like these that I feel like plugging my website. But it's naughty so I won't.

PT Barnum said...

@ David Davis

I'm intrigued by your analysis of 'human neutral' effects, but for me what I see in these NuNazis is FEAR. Of life, of mortality, of uncertainty and happenstance, of other people and unpredictability and the unexpected. So they believe that, if they can control all external events, they will be safe. And they cannot understand why everybody else isn't owning up to being just as afraid - and wants to be just as safe as them.

Mrs Rigby said...

Article from the Times, three years ago on my place, and another men-only hotel.

No uproar, no slings and arrows, nothing.

Anonymous said...

Great rant and you are so right we smokers realy do need to get our arses into gear and start fighting back.

The Boggart said...

Just A quick thought If you dont give blood Leg Iron then start, if you already do then carry on,
is somebody in A&E going to refuse a smokers blood on ethical grounds?

I Think not & the righteous would be in a right pickle if a dear loved one needed a transfusion
pronto.
Just A Thought..........

Anonymous said...

I've torn up my Donation Card in protest at the NHS' attitude to smokers. Since half of transplanted lungs come from smokers they'll feel it. Bastards.

James Burr said...

Just left a comment on Ian Dale's site about the B&B thing but I'd like to copy it here if I can (Hell, it's at the bottom of the page now - no-one'll read it, anyway....)

"Whew, what a relief this B & B story has been for me! You see, as a smoker I've known for a while thet the smoking ban doesn't cover hotel rooms and obviously, smoking is still a legal activity. But imagine how I feel now it's been confirmed that all those signs in B&Bs saying "No Smoking" and all the hoteliers who've told me not to stay are actually breaking the law as they have to accept anyone into their rooms. Happy days!

What? You mean I can stay but I can't smoke? In the same way that the B&B owners allowed them to stay in separate rooms but said they couldn't share a bed? Well, if that's the case why is this even a story?

I'm confused now. Which is it? Do B&B owners have to accept anyone and allow any legal activity to happen in the room as the customer has rented it (as I've seen argued everywhere) or do B&B owners have a right to say what does and doesn't happen in their rooms?

Answers, please. And no hypocrisy, thank you.

Stewart Cowan said...

Sorry, this has turned into a massive post. Need to do it in two.

I see OH links to the Intercom Trust's accounts (yet another LGBT 'charity').

I'd never heard of this outfit before, but it is yet another for the Fake Charities website.

Their 2009 income of £272,909 includes just £4,843 of voluntary donations from the public, plus another £5,355 from 'Exeter Pride'.

All the rest appears to come from public funds. A fake charity if ever there was one, although not quite as bad as ASH!

Comparing these 'charities' which tend for the homosexual - in effect they are state-controlled social engineers - with the likes of ASH is interesting.

ASH gets quite a chunk of its funds from the NHS, but also from charities like Cancer Research UK and the British Heart Foundation. And here was me thinking the money was spent on medical research.

I couldn't find evidence of Lottery money being siphoned off to ASH, but I came across this on their website:

Children as young as 14 will be offered free nicotine patches in a drive to reduce under-age smoking, it was disclosed yesterday.

Smokers in schools and youth groups will be put on courses of nicotine patches, gum or tablets in an effort to reduce cancer rates.

The £180,000 lottery-funded pilot scheme is to be launched in Lanarkshire, where almost half of deaths from cancer are linked to smoking.


LI, you have convinced me that gum and patches don't really work, but neither has a few decades of propaganda:

A survey showed last year that 24 per cent of 15-year-old girls in Scotland and 14 per cent of 15-year-old boys are smokers.

So, the 18 age limit wasn't quite successful. They must be scratching their heads to try and invigorate their few remaining brain cells in their quest to work it out.

Bear with me, please!

The antismokers get a very large amount of their money from:

a) The government's web of departments;

b) Other charities (making it almost look like money-laundering);

c) The National Lottery

Now compare with the aforementioned Intercom Trust. They get nearly all their money from the same places.

Lottery money provides a huge part of their funding, including Heritage fund money to "promote and support LGB/T Heritage and History Month activities."

Money also comes from various government sources and the Devon & Cornwall Police.

The work this fake charity does is interesting. Now, I am not suggesting that some people don't get a hard time for their lifestyle choice, but the Report of the trustees for their last financial year notes that their Helpline took 642 calls. That's not even two per day on average.

This is what they have helped people with.

We have enabled homeless people to access shelter, and people with mental health problems to negotiate with local mental-health care providers so as to make services more accessible; tenants and landlords have been brought together with positive outcomes for both sides; we have mediated between people in severe difficulties and their local police service to make it possible for the police to provide practical and effective assistance to some very disadvantaged and marginalised people, and thanks to our small hardship fund (the Ashton Fund) we have been able to give direct relief in critical cases of(for example) hunger and rooflessness.

I cannot really see why a 'gay' charity has to be available for these particular issues.

In the Spring of 2009 we began a short-term intensive campaign, called "Enough Is Enough", to encourage phobic crime reporting in Devon. This was funded by the Safer Devon Partnership.

Report name-calling. Report a smoker in your pub. Same idea.

Continued...

Stewart Cowan said...

...If a genuine crime has been committed then let us all be dealt with equally under the same laws. What we have is neighbour grassing up neighbour in a dirty game to divide us into cultural ghettos.

Perhaps the most effective tactic the homosexual activists discovered was to associate themselves with other equality issues, so that the public perception of them would be transformed from undesirable prancing queers to a poor downtrodden minority in constant need of mollycoddling. One of their favourite sayings over this past week has been, "No gays. No blacks. No Irish."

Nobody seemed to be suspicious that they were giving special treatment to a small minority based on their behaviour. Taboo sexual behaviour.

A few high-profile murders intensified the urgent need to 'address' their helpless situation and so it was becoming easier and easier to re-engineer society to ensure homosexual behaviour was promoted and protected.

Look at who the Intercom Trust was aligned with:

Intercom was part of a consortium which was commissioned by the Dorset County Council Local Area Agreement Partnership Board to map community advocacy services in the pan-Dorset area in the fields of race and religion, disability, and sexual orientation and gender identity, and to produce a development plan for such services.

It is bizarre to me that people now believe that they have a right to be respected for engaging in unnatural sexual behaviour. They wanted tolerance, then respect, but that still wasn't enough. Now they demand 100% compliance to the rules that Stonewall drew up for New Labour. One very slight step out of line, like Chris Grayling, and the socialist media comes down on you like a ton of bricks (or KY jelly).

The Tories want to win the election so desperately that they won't admit to themselves how crazy this whole situation is.

These fake charities have immense power, not only by dictating policy to the government, but by their use of the media and infiltration of schools.

To sum up this Tale of Two Charities (if anyone is still reading), the National Lottery, the Government and fake charities throw money at promoting one sort of behaviour (practised by few; objected to by many), yet persecute people who partake of different behaviour (practised by many; objected to by nobody in premises where smoking was allowed).

I wonder how the Newspeak dictionary will define "equality"?

Stewart Cowan said...

Correction.

​The article from which I quoted this,

"A survey showed last year that 24 per cent of 15-year-old girls in Scotland and 14 per cent of 15-year-old boys are smokers,"

was actually written in 2005, whereas the legal age to buy cigarettes was increased from 16 to 18 in 2007.

BUT, this BBC article from the start of 2009 says:

The number of young people smoking in Scotland is at a 10-year high.

According to the latest stats, nearly a third of 16 to 24-year-olds smoke.

An 18 year-old from Newton Mearns, reckons that changing the age limit has made more young people want to smoke. "I think because the fact they put it to 18 it made it more cool...," he says. "It's a coolness thing."

Stewart Cowan said...

That is to say: this BBC article.

Tomrat said...

My take on the matter; most definately a cynical attempt to frame the debate by labourious to "nastify" the opposition, or to confirm Cambo's collectivist credentials- he hasn't dissapointed. :-(

Junican said...

Mr A.

You ask for a reason that you should not be able to book a room in a B & B and be rufused permission to smoke.

The answer is that the law against 'discrimination' applies to only certain stated categories - race, gender, religion, and others.

It is not permissable to discrimate for reasons of gender, but quite permissable to discrimate for reasons of smoking.

Of course, this discrimination is excuse on the grounds that smoking is a stinking, filthy habit. Smoke leaks under doors and through keyholes and thus reders the air unbreathable. Also, cleaners etc will collapse if they go into the room to clean and breath even the slightest wiff of any remaining second-hand smoke........you get the picture.

Joe Halliwell said...

This piece is needlessly homophobic.

Let's try a simple experiment -- replace the slurs that refer to homosexuality with ones that refer to race:

Example 1: "This B&B is a place that does not allow blacks to stay in it. If I can name one place that does not allow whites to stay, will you hysterical coons just chill?"

Example 2: "That roundly-condemned B&B despised by Iain Dale and supported by Chris Grayling should also have been able to advertise 'Whites only, no jungle jiving in our house thank you very much' but if they did that, the Discrimination Nazis would have come down on them like a ton of gumbo."

Doesn't that come across as... well... ignorant at least? Maybe even racist? Maybe even unacceptably so?

Homophobic slurs aside, there's a difference between the liberty to harm oneself (though, say, smoking) and the liberty to harm others (through, say, discriminatory treatment and the perpetuation of ill-conceived prejudices).

Eliding that difference, as this piece does, can only weaken the liberal cause.

Leg-iron said...

Joe - your simple experiment is an old one, and applies to every sentence ever written. Take some of the things I've said about violent people in the past and replace 'violent' with 'black'. Take another line from another post and replace 'BNP' with 'black'.

Take one out-of-context line from the Bible and replace any word with 'black'. You could, using that technique, pretend that Jesus founded the slave trade.

The out of context line game is as old as the hills and cuts no ice here. Not even 'There is no such thing as society' will wash here.

There is nothing homophobic here, nothing racist (maybe in your comment, but not in anything I've written), and as for ignorant, well, I'm afraid such insults are water off a duck's back. I've been called far worse.

If discrimination 'harms others', what are your thoughts on the gay-men-only hotel? I am perfectly fine with that gay hotel advertising to a particular clientele because it does no harm. I would also be perfectly fine with another hotel advertising to another, specific clientele because it does no harm.

But what are your thoughts on it? Tell you what, try replacing 'non-gay' with 'black'.

And then we can discuss those government approved women-only shortlists and industry quotas and refusing employment on the grounds of smoking and/or body shape and maybe we can put the preferences of one little B&B into some kind of perspective.

Joe, you took two lines out of context, turned them into race-hate-filled soundbites and then called me racist. If you'd been reading for a while you'd know that I am very familiar with all these techniques.

Someone once suggested I put them all together in one place. Perhaps it's time I did.

Joe Halliwell said...

Er. I didn't call you racist. I called your post homophobic.

And for the record, I think it would be completely unacceptable for the "gay-men-only" hotel to refuse service to a female or heterosexual customer.

Their advertising (as I'm sure you appreciate) is harmless/naff. No-one is likely to feel hurt or excluded by it.

Leg-iron said...

And for the record, I think it would be completely unacceptable for the "gay-men-only" hotel to refuse service to a female or heterosexual customer.

Then we have very different viewpoints. I do not find it unacceptable for that gay hotel to refuse entry to straight people. It is a private business and they should be allowed to run it any way they like. From a business point of view, I think they are wrong to limit their range of potential customers but it's their choice.

Their advertising is harmless. I am not in the least offended by it. Some are though. Don't they count?

There are people who are offended by having the gay lifestyle openly advertised. I don't agree with them - but I don't agree with those who are offended by their attitude either. For me, there is no 'right' offended and 'wrong' offended. It's all silly.

I am not offended in the slightest by a hotel advertising 'no straights'. There are plenty of other hotels.

That B&B is not allowed to advertise 'no gays' because the force of Stonewall would be on them like a shot.

In both cases, the businesses select customers based on a particular lifestyle choice.

One is deemed highly offensive, the other not at all. Yet they are doing exactly the same thing.

Neither are harming anyone, neither are calling for harm to anyone. All they are doing is limiting their customer base. I wouldn't do that, but it's their business if they choose to.

All this 'I am offended' nonsense is beyond silly. Getting all high-blood-pressure over a few words is much more dangerous than looking at an ad, thinking 'Okay, they don't want my money' and moving to the next one.

We used to be stronger than this.

Stewart Cowan said...

Leg-iron,

Supreme dismissal of Joe's silly games.

It would be good to discuss all the techniques the Righteous use in order to make people think like Joe does.

Top Gay Hotels said...

Strangely enough, I agree with this item. I am 100% for gay rights but sometimes it is just a provocation.. Being gay as I am, why would I insist on my right to stay at a hotel run by a Catholic or a church? No idea.. I personally would not..

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