A small (not small) victory...

[lagilman]

from email:

Before: The Roanoke Athletic Club in Virginia reportedly told Will Trinkle, Juan Granados and their 2-year-old son that they didn't qualify for a family membership because Will and Juan are gay, and therefore not a real family.

After: In just eight days, nearly 175,000 people signed a petition on Change.org supporting Will and Juan, and the Roanoke Athletic Club responded by issuing a new policy: Any family, gay or straight, married or unmarried, now qualifies for a household membership.

"I want to thank everyone who signed," says Mark Lynn Ferguson, the Roanoke native who started the petition supporting Will and Juan. "You hailed from all over -- Roanoke to Rome -- and you delivered a clear message that there is no room for this kind of discrimination in the world."

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I was one of those people who signed the Change.org petition. Do I think that the Club saw the error of their ways, recanted, and will be open and accepting forevermore amen?

No.

But I do think that they care about how they are viewed by others, and the public scorn heaped on them certainly helped changed their behavior.

And once you change behavioral patterns, you can get change into the thinking patterns, too.

Change.org. It really is the little tool that can.

Comments

[riley-merrick.livejournal.com]

I am so glad to see this! It's ridiculous that something like this has to go through a petition process, but its nice that it actually works too.

[oneminutemonkey.livejournal.com]

I didn't play close enough attention to this when it was happening. And I live in Roanoke. Grrr. Shame on my city for this. :(

[wolfsilveroak.livejournal.com]

I live here too and only heard about it after the fact. What gets me is usually Roanoke is better about these sort of things.}:/

[lagilman]

following change.org is a good way to keep up with stuff like this...

[jasondrake.livejournal.com]

if you can make them act someday they might believe

Actions become habits, habits become thoughts, thoughts become beliefs

I paraphrased and butchered that quote from somewhere but I don't remember from where

[spiziks.livejournal.com]

You can definitely shame people into changing their behavior, especially if you let them know their bottom line is at stake.

[goingferal.livejournal.com]

I grew up in Roanoke and was a member at RAC back when it first opened. Will and Juan are friends of my brother's and of most of his friends, too. They were shocked and dismayed at the RAC's decision--the general opinion was that some manager at the RAC had made a *huge* mistake to deny the family membership, especially after first accepting the membership app.

Very glad to see it reversed--and no doubt, the national attention and protests helped.