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Gays bash Hobby Lobby as insensitive

Claiming that they have been insulted by judgmental employees of the Eighth Street Hobby Lobby, a group of gay men and women have cried foul over shabby treatment and are even boycotting the craft store.

The Westside store's general manager, meanwhile, maintains that none of his employees would ever discriminate against customers -- straight or gay. The Oklahoma-based chain store's owners have a strong fundamentalist religious philosophy and operate their organization with stated Christian principles.

But Colorado Springs resident Jeannie Tharp said she was insulted when she went to the store to buy some beads that were on sale. It was right around the time of August's Gay Pride Week, and Tharp said she was wearing a string of rainbow-colored beads in her long hair. When she asked an employee where she would find the sale beads, he asked her if she was wearing rainbow-colored beads because she was gay. Tharp was stunned but acknowledged she was.

"He said, 'I won't help you,'" Tharp said. "It was like he knew what they were for, and he was just getting confirmation.

"I just was dumbfounded. I had never experienced that in my life."

Aghast, Tharp found her beads and then told a store manager what had transpired. But the manager merely said, " 'Oh well,' like what was he supposed to do about it," she said.

"So I won't go back there, and I'm not the only one. For some reason, they just don't like gays."

'We don't serve your type'

Colorado Springs resident Jol Diehl, who is gay, said he knows of four couples who have been treated as suspect -- and even blatantly refused service by store employees.

Diehl said a couple he knows were recently shopping in the craft area of the store and, while looking at fabric samples, tried unsuccessfully to get help from employees. "One of the employees finally looked at them and said, 'We don't like dealing with your type here,'" he said.

After hearing similar stories from his friends, Diehl said he contacted an assistant store manager by phone two weeks ago. However, the manager dismissed the assertion as "ridiculous," Diehl said. Now he is considering organizing a boycott against the store.

"It's just the whole feeling they get that they are not wanted," Diehl said. "You want to be able to go and shop somewhere and know when you go in that particular store you are respected as a customer."

Diehl said he is aware of Hobby Lobby's strong religious dogma. As an ordained minister, he said, he preaches unconditional love.

But, he said, "it's one thing to shop somewhere, it's another thing to get beliefs shoved down your throat."

Diehl said that the manager he spoke with told him that he should write down the names of the employees the next time it happens. But that dismissal frustrated him further.

We're all human

This week, the store's general manager, Keith Meser, initially said he was aware of Diehl's complaint but dismissed the charge of discrimination as impossible.

"I know that nothing like this has ever happened," he said. "I'm wondering if they have the right store."

Meser said he and his assistant manager -- who had taken Diehl's complaint -- tried to imagine which employees could have discriminated but couldn't list any possible culprits. The issue has not been raised during any employee staff meetings, he said.

Meser said the store holds no policy against gay couples or individuals, and he sometimes sees men coming in together holding hands.

"I've seen them in the store together, and I help them," Meser said. "I even walk out to the car with them.

"They're human beings just like anything else."

However, Tharp said she also knows other gays who have been treated poorly if they enter the store with their partners. Now, she said, many of her straight friends are refusing to shop at the store in a

I probably will be a professor eventually," he says. "After I make all the money, and get old, turn 50-something. I'll be old and gray-haired and over-the-hill, I'll be teaching English in some rural facility somewhere. And I'll be like, 'You know, I used to be a famous celebrity. Here I am in your English class, and I used to be somebody famous.

There are too many other nuggets in there, here is just one...

The job market is really screwed up. A talented guy like me is easily worth seven figures or more in a good economy. ... Do you know what I'd be doing with my life if it wasn't for this website? Nothing. Zilch. Zero. Back against the wall, going to interview after interview and being rejected like every other honest, hard-working American

Gonna have a real hard time finding work now buddy. And you can forget about finding a girlfriend for a long time too. Sadly, I don't think this is the last we hear of this scum.

Worse, they would even seize computers (such as servers or database farms) that house the data of innocent people, and these people would not have any right to get their data back.

Although I have very little sympathy for copyright thievery — regardless of whether it is exactly or almost the same as thievery of tangible goods — the ease, with which the government can seize suspect's property, and the difficulties facing the ex-suspect in getting the property back are a major problem in our legal system.

There are a lot of safeguards for the suspect's person, but the property (including cash) is hardly protected at all. In Giulliany's New York, drunk drivers were supposed to lose their cars even — on a cop's say-so in a "traffic-court" (run by the Executive branch, not Judiciary). In this illiberal Massachusetts town, a kid would lose bicycles, if caught without a helmet. Police don't need to prove anything — they can just take it using the force we give them to fight crimes. Then, in many cases, the victim — already cleared of all (or most) of the originally suspected wrongdoing — has to sue to get the seized stuff back, and there is no telling, neither what it will cost them (in legal fees alone), nor what condition the stuff will be upon return.

The situation is slowly changing, but on the local levels only. A Constitutional amendment, or other sort of "Miranda rights"-like rule is long overdue.

Meanwhile, why should those accused of copyright violations have it any different? Because some of them could just have been by-standers? Well, if you give your bicycle to a kid, who is accused of riding helmet-less by the cop, you are bystander too. Same with loaning your car to a friend, who is then accused of DUI...

Last year, however, they apparently unveiled a bigger room: http://www.csindy.com/csindy/2005-03-10/news.html. The picture is small, but it looks like they might have cut out the conference room and added the space that used to be that room and whatever was under it to the control room.

Another neat thing was the water reservoir; I don't know if there was more than the one we saw. It was an open pool, not very deep, in a long side tunnel with a bare rock roof.

This letterjust came up in the Colorado Spings Independent might offer up some insight.


The midnight show

Buried in last Saturday's Gazette so few would see it was the news that Adelphia is moving the time of The Daily Show from 9 p.m. to midnight.

We now have yet another thing to complain to Adelphia about and I hope your team has some ideas about how to protest this. Letters to Sandra Mann or something? It's another strike by the conservatives in this city. I pay $91.80 per month to Adelphia for cable service (of which we watch five channels) and the Internet. For the first time ever, I'm going to call the satellite companies if this doesn't get changed.

Please, please, please make this a big issue in your paper. It's supposed to go into effect on Dec. 20. I think that people who don't know about this will be more than eager to get the change stopped.

-- NAME WITH HELD BY ME


Colorado Springs

Editor's note: Adelphia's toll free telephone number is 800/626-6299. Readers who are enraged about the plan to move Jon Stewart's Daily Show to the wee hours of the night should also contact the Independent via e-mail at degette@csindy.com

As of yet I still havn't gotten a reason for this move from adelphia. Anything to stop antiWar or Bush comedy from making it to the Airwaves I guess.

Nothing new from the home town of Focus on the Family.

This letterjust came up in the Colorado Spings Independent might offer up some insight.


The midnight show

Buried in last Saturday's Gazette so few would see it was the news that Adelphia is moving the time of The Daily Show from 9 p.m. to midnight.

We now have yet another thing to complain to Adelphia about and I hope your team has some ideas about how to protest this. Letters to Sandra Mann or something? It's another strike by the conservatives in this city. I pay $91.80 per month to Adelphia for cable service (of which we watch five channels) and the Internet. For the first time ever, I'm going to call the satellite companies if this doesn't get changed.

Please, please, please make this a big issue in your paper. It's supposed to go into effect on Dec. 20. I think that people who don't know about this will be more than eager to get the change stopped.

-- NAME WITH HELD BY ME


Colorado Springs

Editor's note: Adelphia's toll free telephone number is 800/626-6299. Readers who are enraged about the plan to move Jon Stewart's Daily Show to the wee hours of the night should also contact the Independent via e-mail at degette@csindy.com

As of yet I still havn't gotten a reason for this move from adelphia. Anything to stop antiWar or Bush comedy from making it to the Airwaves I guess.

Nothing new from the home town of Focus on the Family.

Want health insurance? Move to Iraq.