{"id":242764,"date":"2009-07-24T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-24T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sdnews.com\/manchester-hotel-boycott-the-heat-goes-on\/"},"modified":"2009-07-24T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-07-24T07:00:00","slug":"manchester-hotel-boycott-the-heat-goes-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/manchester-hotel-boycott-the-heat-goes-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Boicot del hotel en Manchester: el calor contin\u00faa"},"content":{"rendered":"

Por Leslie Wolf Branscomb<\/p>\n

\"cleve\"<\/a>
Gay and lesbian activist Cleve Jones lends his support to the boycott. Photo: Ron James<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s safe to say that hotel developer Douglas Manchester regrets his decision to contribute $125,000 to the Proposition 8 campaign to ban gay marriage.<\/p>\n

In fact, his spokesman said so in a recent interview. Repeatedly.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has continuously apologized,\u201d said Kelly Commerford, spokesman for the Manchester Grand Hyatt hotel. \u201cEveryone makes mistakes and he\u2019s recognized it.\u201d<\/p>\n

California voters passed Prop. 8 in November, outlawing same-sex marriage.<\/p>\n

Commerford said Manchester, a devout Catholic, was asked to make the donation by his church. To make amends, Manchester has offered a matching amount of funds to gay and lesbian organizations and has pledged to \u201ccontinue to reach out and do supportive things for the gay community,\u201d Commerford said.<\/p>\n

But no amount of retroactive soul-searching on Manchester\u2019s part has so far placated local gay marriage proponents, who continue to call for a boycott of Manchester\u2019s Grand Hyatt and his other hotels.<\/p>\n

Organizers upped the stakes June 17, on the eve of San Diego\u2019s annual Pride parade, by announcing that not only would the one-year-old boycott continue, but that it will go global.<\/p>\n

At a press conference in front of the Manchester Grand Hyatt, Fred Karger, founder of Californians Against Hate, unveiled posters — in Japanese and Spanish as well as English –depicting the hotel surrounded by yellow caution tape with the words \u201cplease do not cross\u201d and \u201cdon\u2019t support bigotry and discrimination.\u201d<\/p>\n

Karger said the first year of the boycott was a success, and said they\u2019d persuaded at least 12 big conventions booked at the hotel to cancel. Karger said a hotel spokesman told him the boycott had cost the hotel at least $7 million.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis thing really did take on a life of its own,\u201d Karger said. \u201cIt\u2019s been very, very successful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Commerford wouldn\u2019t confirm the dollar figure, saying the hotel would not not publicly release its financial information.<\/p>\n

He did say the hotel was hurt recently by cancellations of the International Employee Benefits Association and the American Association of Justice, which took its convention to San Francisco instead. The justice association had booked 7,000 rooms, and the hotel held that space open for them for seven years, Commerford said.<\/p>\n

He said the rooms were eventually resold, although at a lower rate. \u201cThe only thing that hurt was the employees who didn\u2019t get to work full shifts last week,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Commerford said there are many gay employees at the Manchester Hyatt, including himself. He is convinced that the boycott isn\u2019t about gay rights, but about a labor dispute. Manchester Hyatt employees are non-union.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey continue to wage a boycott where there is no boycott needed,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s very self-serving. It\u2019s very unjustified.\u201d<\/p>\n

Karger said the GLBT community has joined forces with organized labor to make the boycott work. He acknowledged that Manchester did offer $125,000 \u2013 the same amount he gave to Prop. 8 \u2013 for AIDS service organizations, \u201cwhich are tremendously worthy causes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut where\u2019s the labor component?\u201d Karger asked. Manchester needs to take that into consideration because it\u2019s the hotel\u2019s employees who are most hurt by the boycott, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve said from day one I\u2019d be more than willing to meet with Mr. Manchester and would be willing to settle this,\u201d Karger said.<\/p>\n

What would it take to settle?<\/p>\n

\u201cHe gave $125,000 to put this initiative (Prop. 8) on the ballot,\u201d Karger said. \u201cI would think he would have to give $125,000 to a new initiative to repeal Prop. 8.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf he truly regrets his actions and wants to make amends, I think that\u2019s fair and reasonable,\u201d Karger said.<\/p>\n

Leslie Wolf Branscomb has been an editor and journalist for 27 years, writing primarily about politics and law for the San Diego Union-Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Associated Press and others.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Leslie Wolf Branscomb It\u2019s safe to say that hotel developer Douglas Manchester regrets his decision to contribute $125,000 to the Proposition 8 campaign to ban gay marriage. In fact, his spokesman said so in a recent interview. Repeatedly. \u201cHe has continuously apologized,\u201d said Kelly Commerford, spokesman for the Manchester Grand Hyatt hotel. \u201cEveryone makes […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1290,"featured_media":242765,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"Manchester Hotel Boycott: The Heat Goes On","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11551,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1290"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}