Complaints prompt water park to end discounts for church groups

FoxNews.com ^ | August 13, 2012 | Mike Jaccarino

[Hunton Peck]

Now, no one gets the discount.

A water park in the heart of the Bible Belt is ending the $5-per-person discount it had been offering on its entrance fee to church groups after the head of a secular charity that caters to inner-city youths requested the same deal for its kids.

The Willow Springs Water Park in Little Rock, Ark., had been knocking a few dollars off the price of admission for people who came to the park with their church group. The entrance fee was lowered 50 percent to $5 for children who came in that context. However, when Leifel Jackson, executive director of Reaching Our Children and Neighborhoods (ROCAN), a secular non-profit that seeks to help inner-city youth, asked if the 35 kids he wanted to bring to the park could get the same discount, he was rebuffed by a park office worker.

The park, which hosts Bible camps throughout the summer and has long catered to church groups, charges $15 for adults, $10 for children under 15 years of age, and $9-a-head for groups over 15 people. The park knocks $6 off admission for firefighters, law enforcement and members of the military.

Undeterred, Jeff Poleet, a second ROCAN administrator, phoned David Ratliff, Willow Spring Water Park's owner, to complain about what he felt was a discriminatory practice.

As a result, Ratliff decided to cancel the church-group discounts, rather than give ROCAN the same.... But the story doesn't end there.

***

[rlmorel]

Last year, there was a case where a private pool had to close down because they refused to allow an inner city group to bring kids to it, and they would not change their policy, so they closed. (I don’t think it was a inner city church group, but I do think the distinction is important)

They HAD allowed those same inner city groups to rent the facilities, but they were so disruptive and destructive they vowed not to allow them in again.

So they were sued. And they closed up instead.

I don’t remember where it was, but I did read the news article on it.

This is different, apparently, and doesn’t look like it was this kind of thing. But I will admit that when I hear about interactions that businesses have with inner city youths, the context is important.

[Right Wing Assault]

I would say hello, and drop an offering in the plate in cash.

I thought the same thing, but then I read the threat by the pesky lawyer who told him be had better not give any covert discount. I bet this prick has a private dick following this guy around, hoping to catch him making donations and file a billion dollar discrimination suit and sic the DOJ on him.

[rlmorel]

"...A Pennsylvania atheist filed a grievance with the state's Human Relations Commission this summer after he learned that Prudhomme’s Lost Cajun Kitchen in Columbia was offering a 10 percent discount on meals to people who brought their church bulletin with them. “I did this not out of spite, but out of a feeling against the prevailing self-righteousness that stems from religion, particularly in Lancaster County,” John Wolff, a retired electrical engineer, told the Intelligencer Journal of his decision to go toe-to-toe with the restaurant. “I don’t consider it an earthshaking affair, but in this area in particular, we seem to have so many self-righteous religious people, so it just annoys me.”

Militant atheists are undoubtedly the most miserable, obnoxious and annoying people there are on this earth. If they they are unhappy here, just wait until the go to the next place.

[jwalsh07]

You left out the part where the advocacy group threatened legal action ,meaning the government, which is why he acquiesced. The government will call his park a “public accommodation” and punish him if he doesn’t get right with the secularists. In a free country such a threat would not exist and people could frequent or not frequent his park based on his discount policies.

[Conscience of a Conservative]

According to this article, at least, the “advocacy group” (read: thuggish lawyers) caught wind of this after the water park changed its policy, and threatened legal action if the water park reinstitutes the discount. Obviously that’s a problem, but that does not appear to have been a factor in the initial decision.

[jwalsh07]

You have no conscience. :-} Why else would the owner change existing policy? One reason and one reason only, the threat of government hanging over his exposed neck.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

There’s some pretty clear rules here, and it is not particularly hard to operate legally if you follow them.

As far as the church groups go, that is probably the trickiest one. You can’t offer a discount for a church group *as such* without getting hassled; so you have to restructure the offer, perhaps as a coupon in an “advertisement annex” to a church bulletin. Creativity is a must to get away with this.

The deal about giving a discount for bringing in a church bulletin is not discriminatory, and the scoundrel’s statement that “I did this not out of spite”, is a bald faced lie.

[smalltownslick]

It’s their business! They have a right to do what they want.