Posted on 08/13/2012 3:29:17 PM PDT by 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.
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(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Freedom for property owners is a thing of the past. A business owner should be able to give discounts to anybody he wants or not at all.
Perhaps he should re-institute the program on a rebate basis, depending on the observed collective behavior of the groups. A little video footage goes a long way.
Well, next thing you know, they’ll be having to give discounts to Boy Scouts, basketball teams, the Bloods and Crips, Hells Angels, used car salesmen, nudist colonies, Satan worshipers, actuaries, packer/munchers, child molesters, Renault owners....any kind of group.
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 . . . the restaurant's owner refused to halt the promotion. And the matter is still pending before the secular Pennsylvania commission.
I am disgusted with this self-righteous bully; what kind of person thinks he has the right to dictate pricing policy and business decisions to a private company? I am equally disgusted that a "Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission" even exists. If that was my restaurant, I would plaster the thuggish Atheist's name everywhere I could - to encourage the decent people of the town to shun him, which I'd assume they are mostly doing already simply because of equally revolting behavior in his other daily activities.
The attacks on Christians never seem to cease and continue from vandalizing Chick-Fil-A’s, to burning churches, killing Christians, forcing mosques in our Christian communities, imposing gay marriage in our cites and now eliminating discounts for Christians at a water park.
I may be reaching here, but on balance, church youth groups juuuust might be a little less prone to violence than inner city youts.
I may be reaching here, but on balance, church youth groups juuuust might be a little less prone to violence than inner city youts.
But you’re assuming absolute liberty to do that. In Obama’s America, liberty is old and tired, and grandpa government is here to stay.
I’m sure this doesn’t come as news, but there are plenty of church youth groups that include inner-city kids. It’s not where the kids come from, but the purpose for which they’re gathered.
Looks like a reclaimed gravel pit. I’ll pass on Inner City Youth discount day.
I know what everyone is saying here, but this one rubs me the wrong way. Why did they cancel the church program rathe than giving the discount to the inner city kids? I know all about private property but this just doesn’t seem like the right decision — it seems like cutting off you nose to spite your face. And like it or not, we’ve lived for a long time in a world where you can’t favor one religion or group over another. You can’t give Christians a discount over non-Christians in any business, just like you can’t give whites a discount over blacks. Once again, I understand and sympathize with the arguments that private businesses should be able to do what they want to do but we have not lived in that world for 40 or 50 years with anti-discrimination laws.
“Ladies pay no cover charge”
“Free ladies night”
...
I’m not an expert, but I’m pretty sure your interpretation of the Federal anti-discrimination laws is incorrect, for now.
You never know when those laws will sprout new penumbras and eminences, though.
If I were Mr. Ratliff, I would, following each church group at full admission, make a sunday visit to that congregation. I would say hello, and drop an offering in the plate in cash. It is a free country. One just has to be a little smarter.
Is this the same water park where Katy Perry’s bathing suit fell off? Forget the discount, I’ll pay full price for that.
Promoting good is against the law. It discriminates against evil.
It’s hard to say on either this one or the other one in the article where the guy gave a discount if you brought in your church bulletin. You couldn’t legally give a discount only to black people, but could you give a discount only to NAACP members? Couldn’t he make them private club members and give them special club pricing and make it a requirement of membership that they sign a document claiming membership in a church? Obviously not every form of special pricing for a certain group is considered discriminatory, a la ladies’ nights.
Unless there's more to the story than is in the article (which, of course, is likely), I'm not sure I see a loss of freedom here. The water park offered discounts to church groups. The inner city youth group asked for the same discount, and was turned down. The group complained, directly to the water park, and the water park responded by eliminating the discount. The water park wasn't forced to do so by the government, they chose to do so.
Of course, there may well have been a legal threat of some kind in that second phone call (I'd almost be surprised if there wasn't), but absent that, it looks like the water park simply capitulated to the complaints. Nothing wrong with that - the group was free to complain, and the water park was free to respond as they saw fit.
so I decided to become a self-righteous non-religious person.
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