Just in time for Pride Month, we have a new video going viral of an outraged white woman being escorted out of a hotel pool area in Sacramento after allegedly complaining about the fact that two women were publicly kissing with children present.
Now, we should preface this by saying we have no idea what transpired before the video was shot, and we have only the Instagrammer’s description of events and this report by CBS Sacramento to go on. The incident took place Sunday at the Kimpton Sawyer hotel in Sacramento, and a rep for the hotel calls it an “unfortunate disagreement between guests” that was later resolved peacefully.
But according to witnesses and those in the pool, including one of the women who was yelled at by these other guests, a group of people were being affectionate in the hotel pool, but two women in the group who were kissing were the only ones approached by these two outraged mothers — who didn’t want their children exposed to what was going on.
In the video seen below, people in the pool can be heard shouting, “Shame! Shame!” at the outraged people as they leave the pool area. CBS Sacramento reports that the complainants and the two kissing women were questioned by hotel staff about the conflict, and it looks like the “Karens” in question decided to pack up and leave.
A blond woman storms out and confronts the group for apparently calling them racist “for being white,” and she says, “Fuck off!” while flipping off the camera.
One woman does not want to go quietly, and declares herself a “Jewish woman from New Jersey” who now lives in Oakland — when accused of being “suburban” she replies, “I live in Oakland, you fucking asshole.”
This woman’s name appears to be “Deb,” according to the Starbucks cup in her hand, and to be more precise, she says to the people yelling “Shame!”, “I have never met anyone like you guys. Are you kidding me? I have never been more embarrassed in my life for the human race. I am a Jewish woman from New Jersey, you’re a disgusting piece of shit.”
It should be noted that the woman’s children appear to still be nearby as she’s swearing like a sailor.
She also pulls the “Do you have any children?” card, to which they reply that they don’t want kids, and she throws in, “Good, ’cause you’d be a fucking terrible dad.”
The Instagram poster is named Art Kaligos, and he writes, “This woman asked a female couple to stop kissing in a public pool because her kids were present. So we gave her the Cersei Lannister treatment while they were escorted out by security.”
One of the women who was scolded for kissing, Domonique Veasley, told CBS Sacramento, “This is not okay anymore, it’s 2021.” As she explains, “My initial reaction for the children was ‘Oh yeah,’ and then I was like ‘You are asking me to stop being me.'”
The pandemic brought out a lot of white outrage about public-health orders and mask wearing, with a lot of Trump supporters and virus skeptics who wanted the world to know that they believed such orders violated their rights.
Now we’re back to some good old-fashioned conflict between some libertine LGBT people living their lives and some more socially conservative moms who probably can’t hang in your average boutique-hotel pool party situation anyway, children or no.
Fun stuff!
Update: The families involved claim they are now being harassed thanks to all the media coverage and the video going viral. And they’ve enlisted a lawyer, who said in a statement to SFGate that the version of events being reported is “false and defamatory,” and had to do with observed “sexual activity” and not with kissing or homophobia.
“Young children should not be forced to witness explicit sexual activity in a hotel swimming pool in the middle of a summer afternoon irrespective of gender or sexual identity,” attorney Terry Fahn said. “When members of the party politely and respectfully asked that some of the sexual activity be toned down because children were close by in the pool, they were met with aggressive verbal attacks.”
As stated above, witnesses and one of the parties involved claim that the two women were singled out more than the straight people. But also, as stated above, we can’t confirm what exactly was happening in the pool before this confrontation took place.
Also, the Chronicle spoke to Kaligos, who shot the video, who does not say he saw anything very sexual happening when he heard shouting back and forth between women in the pool and the families in a poolside cabana. “This is about accountability and changing social norms,” he says. “The more we see these sorts of reactions, the more we can say this is not acceptable behavior.” And of the angry mothers, he says, “They’re the ones who made it go viral with what they were saying, their reaction.”
