Alaska Airlines apologizes to a gay couple who were asked to switch seats with a straight couple.
Alaska Airlines apologized this week after a flight attendant asked a gay man to give up his seat next to his partner so a straight couple could sit together, an exchange that put the airline on the defensive as it rebutted claims of discrimination.
David Cooley, owner of a gay bar in West Hollywood, Calif., called the Abbey, wrote on Facebook on Sunday that he and his partner had boarded a flight to Los Angeles from New York when a flight attendant asked if Cooley’s partner would move “so a couple could sit together.”
Cooley said he told the attendant that the two men were a couple and that he wanted to sit with his partner. But the attendant gave Cooley’s partner a choice: Move for the other couple or get off the plane.
“We could not bear the feeling of humiliation for an entire cross-country flight and left the plane,” Cooley said. “I cannot believe that an airline in this day and age would give a straight couple preferential treatment over a gay couple and go so far as to ask us to leave.”
Cooley declined to comment further Wednesday. But his posts about the exchange on Facebook and Twitter brought a wave of criticism, with many noting that the exchange was a stark example of the discrimination that LGBT people experience in travel and business.
The conversation around such discrimination gained national attention in June when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Colorado baker who had refused to create a wedding cake for a gay couple. The decision left open a larger question of whether a business can discriminate against gay men and lesbians based on rights protected by the First Amendment.
Stories like Cooley’s, however, are not as cut-and-dry as the Colorado baker case, which stemmed from a flat-out refusal to make the cake, said Naomi Goldberg, policy and research director at the Movement Advancement Project, a research group that recently helped organize a campaign encouraging businesses to be more inclusive.
Goldberg said that instances where LGBT people are treated in a “less positive” or different way from others are “pretty pervasive” and that they alter how people live their lives. A 2017 survey from the liberal think tank Center for American Progress showed that more than 36 percent of LGBT people hid personal relationships for fear of discrimination. Twelve percent avoided public places like restaurants and stores for the same reason, according to the survey.
Social media has allowed people to “lift up more of a national conversation” about the less obvious forms of discrimination that people typically had not publicly responded to, she said.
“Obviously, this couple’s experience should not have happened,” Goldberg said . “Whether or not it’s in line with Alaska Airlines values, or even policies, it did happen.”
Alaska Airlines reached out to Cooley on Twitter on Sunday and issued a public apology Tuesday, saying the company would offer to refund his ticket and was “deeply sorry for the situation and did not intend to make Mr. Cooley and his partner feel uncomfortable in any way.”
But the airline said the encounter was not a case of discrimination, characterizing what happened as a “seating error.”