Freakazoid City Employee in Hazard Abuses Disabled Gay Men

Remember Hazard, Kentucky? Where the cops expect an invisible sky wizard to do their jobs for them?

Yeah, now Hazard public employees are using that same invisible sky wizard to justify cruelty to developmentally disabled gay people.


From the Courier:

A storm of protest has erupted Hazard following a complaint that a worker at a city-owned pool cited the Bible as authority that gay people weren't allowed to swim there and forced two intellectually disabled gay men to leave.

“They left the facility crying,” said Jordan Palmer, president of the gay-rights group Kentucky Equality Federation. “You don't treat people that way, especially someone that is developmentally challenged.”

The two men had gone last Friday to the Hazard Pavilion recreation center with a group called Mending Hearts Inc., which works with intellectually and developmentally disabled adults, according to a complaint filed with the federation by Mending Hearts.

The group is calling for the pool worker to be transferred to another department and is planning a protest Saturday at the center.

But the group's complaint also has led to angry e-mails, including one threat that Palmer “will leave with a bullet in his head” if the protest is held, Palmer said.

The federation said in a news release the men were sitting together beside the pool when one of them apparently sat on the other's knee and put his arm around him. Mending Hearts Executive Director Shirlyn Perkins said in the complaint that “the Pavilion staff immediately entered the pool area and asked my clients and their staff to leave the Pavilion.” When asked why, the complaint said, “they were informed that `gay people' weren't allowed to swim there.”

The complaint went on to say that a male pavilion staff member “stated that what he was doing was in the Bible and he could do it. … My clients, who already feel ridiculed and different, left the city-owned facility crying and embarrassed for trying to participate in `normal' activities that everyday `normal' people do,” the federation quoted the complaint as saying.

Hazard Mayor Nan Gorman said the city is sorry about the incident, an investigation is under way and no decisions have been made about the employee.

Believe it or not, Hazard is what passes for progressive in the mountains. I think city officials are very upset that a city employee threw those men out of the pool. I am certain they are even more upset that this freakazoid discrimination is likely to earn Hazard national publicity - especially with the GOP candidates competing for the freakazoid vote.

But this is what happens when you tolerate freakazoid intolerance: hate takes over.

So, Hazard: you can continue to show the progressive path to the rest of Eastern Kentucky, or you can give up and wait for an invisible sky wizard to solve all your problems.