An incident involving a lesbian couple at a Seattle Mariners game Friday night has the team both apologizing to and pointing fingers at the couple. The two women are left wondering why they were told that their basic displays of public affection were deemed inappropriate by the people who complained, including a Mariners staffer.
During the seventh inning, an usher told Giuliana Garcia and Calista Nabors they were acting inappropriately "affectionate" for Safeco Field's "family friendly environment."
Virtually the exact same thing happened in 2008, only that time, a Latina gay couple were kicked out of the stadium.
The Mariners code of conduct for fans famously bans "displays of affection not appropriate in a public, family setting." Which means fans at the ballpark are banned from engaging in skeezy PDA anyway—at home I can watch the game in a sling, if I like. But since "family" is often right-wing code for "antigay" (see: "family values," "Family Research Council," "the traditional family"), while I had her on the phone I took the opportunity to ask Mariners spokeswoman [Rebecca] Hale just how the Mariners organization defines the word "family."
"I don't know," Hale replied after a short pause.
Eight years later, there's still plenty of explicit and implicit bias against LGBTQ couples. A study published in the American Sociological Review found that just 55 percent of American heterosexuals approve of gay men kissing on the cheek in public. Straight couples doing the same thing? 95 percent approve.
Hale, the Mariners spokesperson, told me today their staff member acted of her own initiative last week after seeing the couple making out in the concourse for around eight minutes. They've reviewed surveillance video and feel "confident" the staff member acted based on what they believe to be inappropriate behavior, not the couple's sexual orientation.
The Mariners don't track whether there's any bias in the way they enforce their code of conduct. Anecdotally, they don't deal with more than a "couple" alleged violations of the PDA policy per year, Hale said.
But unlike, for example, the Seattle police department, the Mariners don't offer their staff any specific training on LGBTQ issues. Maybe they should get on that.
Still, Hale admitted that the stadium staff didn't properly communicate with the couple, who filed an official complaint and took to Instagram, calling it a "hateful incident."
"It's just unfortunate that we did not do a good job of communicating the motives behind it to the couple," Hale said. "They took away from it that you're focusing on us because we are a gay couple, and not you're focusing on us because of the behavior... That's on us. We can do better and we will do better."
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