Posted by: Editor on Oct 13, 2004 – 11:43 AM
newsandinfo  After years of refusing to accept gays and lesbians, one of the world’s biggest chains of resort hotels has announced it will now welcome same-sex couples.
Sandals Resorts, faced with a threatened human rights complaint in Canada, and a negative media campaign in the UK, said Monday night it was lifting its ban on gay couples from 13 resorts it operates in the Caribbean. The ban had been in place since 2001.
Last year, London Mayor Ken Livingstone ordered ads for Sandals removed from the city subway system. The “Love is all you need” campaign said the resorts in Jamaica, St Lucia, Antigua and Bahamas were for “romantic, mixed-sex couples only”.

Complaints about Sandals policy led Barclaycard, one of Britain’s largest credit card companies, to drop the firm from its promotions.

A Canadian gay couple who booked a holiday at one of Sandals resorts in Jamaica only to have to company reject them threatened to take the Montreal travel agency which accepted the booking and the resort before the Quebec Human Rights Commission.

Publicly Sandals stood its ground, but privately travel industry sources said it was beginning to feel the pressure. That pressure increased last week when powerful Labor MP Barbara Roche announced a publicity campaign against the company.

Roche announced that she planned to attack the firm during this week’s debate on the civil partnership bill in the Commons. As a minister, she had helped draw up the bill, which legalizes same-sex relationships and gives gay couples similar rights to heterosexual couples. She also helped write a EU directive which bans discrimination against gay and lesbian people in the job market and in voluntary organizations.

But, that directive excluded goods and services, which allowed Sandals to continue its ban.

By Peter Moore
365gay.com