Same-sex couple accuse rights commission of ‘cheap politics’

THE SAME-sex couple whose wedding was rejected by the Beloftebos Wedding Venue have accused the SA Human Right Commission (SAHRC) of opportunism and “cheap politics” for fronting their names in its application to the Equality Court.

In a statement Sasha-Lee Heekes and Megan Watling said: “We simply do not trust the SAHRC to act in our best interests.

“The case has nothing to do with human rights or concern for the

LGBTQIA+ community, but is a case of cheap politics on behalf of the SAHRC.

“Our concern is that their motives for filing urgently on Monday was motivated not by a need to protect the LGBTQIA+ community, which they neglected to do for years, but rather in order to grab media attention,” Heekes and Watling said.

The action in the Equality Court is based on two cases. The first is a 2017 case similar to that of Heekes’s and Watling’s in which the Cape Town venue refused to host the wedding of Alexandra Thorne and Alex Lu who have since left South Africa.

Thorne and Lu lodged a complaint with the SAHRC which has now been combined with the most recent incident.

In the application to the Equality Court, commissioner André Gaum of the SAHRC said: “I included the fact of the second complaint in the affidavit in order to provide the court with a more complete factual contexts, and to demonstrate that Beloftebos were persistent in their unlawful policy of exclusion.”

After their rejection by the wedding venue, Heekes and Watling got in touch with the SAHRC and

| AYANDA NDAMANE African News Agency (ANA) their lawyers were invited to a meeting with the SAHRC where Gaum told them they had left it late to lay their case. Heekes and Watling said: “Given the misleading information given to us by STANFORD-BASED wedding venue, Beloftebos refuses to host same-sex wedding ceremonies based on religious grounds. the SAHRC and their extreme tardiness, with due consideration, we wrote to SAHRC on Thursday withdrawing our complaint and asking them not to seek relief on our behalf,” Heekes and Watling said.