Marriott Puts Out Welcome Mat For Opponents of LGBTQ Issues
The Marriott Hotel chain’s mission statement implies that the first priority of the company is to enhance its customer’s lives, just not all of its customers.
In an unfortunate show of corporate hypocrisy, the Marriott Hotel chain, the largest hotel chain in the world which brags about its full throated support of the LGBTQ+ community, will again host the national summit of “Moms for Liberty,” a far right, nationwide group that lobbies school boards to stop teaching about LGBTQ+ issues and to ban books about sex and race.
The “Joyful Warriors National Summit” is planned for June 29 to July 2, 2023 at the Marriott in Philadelphia. This past July, Marriott hosted Moms for Liberty’s first national conference in Tampa, Fla. About 500 members of the conservative education advocacy network gathered at the hotel to hear speakers and to honor Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.
DeSantis is known for signing the state’s discriminatory Parental Rights in Education act, which has been dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. The law prevents “instruction” or “discussion” of sexual orientation and gender identity and which grade levels would be affected. The bill also requires schools to inform parents if their child identifies with an LGBT orientation. Advocates of the law say it gives parents greater control over their children’s education; opponents say it unfairly targets the LGBTQ community, particularly gay and trans students.
In responding to critics of the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, DeSantis’s press secretary Christina Pushaw, said it would prevent pedophile “grooming” and that critics of the bill were encouraging pedophile teachers who “groom” underage children. “Grooming” is defined by the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN) as manipulations that a sexual “abuser uses to gain access to a potential victim, coerce them to agree to the abuse, and reduce the risk of being caught.”
DeSantis also has backed the “Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees Act,” also known as the Stop WOKE Act” which bars instruction and discussion of racial issues and diversity in schools and the workplace. DeSantis has said the law would prevent teaching so-called critical race theory, a discipline often taught in graduate schools and higher education on how racism has shaped U.S. laws and how those laws have continued to impact the lives of non-white people.
DeSantis and other supporters of the “Stop WOKE Act” say that people should not be taught that some races or sexes are inherently oppressed or privileged.
Moms for Liberty founder Tiffany Descovich said her network plans to introduce similar legislation in every state. Right-wing education activists like Descovich have warned parents that public schools have become “Maoist thought reform prisons” intent on transforming their children into “change agents.”
Formed in January, Moms for Liberty is based in Melbourne, Fla. Bridget Ziegler, a co-founder and former co-director of Moms for Liberty, is the wife of Christian Ziegler, vice chairman of the Florida Republican Party. Founders of Moms for Liberty have appeared on various right wing outlets, including The Rush Limbaugh Show, Tucker Carlson Tonight, Breitbart News, Newsmax, and The Daily Caller.
The group claims to be a nonpartisan grassroots organization but speakers at the Tampa conference were hardly nonpartisan. In addition to Desantis, outspoken conservatives at the summit included trump appointees, Ben Carson, the former secretary of housing and urban development and former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who called for the abolition of the Cabinet-level education department.
Moms for Liberty claims to have around 95,000 members in 200 county chapters across nearly 40 states. Over the last year and a half, the group along with other Christian Nationalist groups, have led conservative education movements and school board protests focused on COVID-19 mask and vaccine mandates, “critical race theory” in the classroom, LGBTQ rights and inclusion, and efforts to restrict or ban books that parents claim are either sexually explicit or too racially sensitive for children.
In Brevard County, Fla., protests were followed by parents calling one school board member a “pedophile,” yelling at her 5-year-old, “Be careful, your mom hurts little kids!” and making threats like, “If you thought January 6 was bad, wait until you see what we have for you!”
At a meeting in Texas, Moms for Liberty hosted anti-LGBTQ activist Kelly Neiders, a self-described “Christian fascist” who organized and led a protest outside of a Dallas drag queen event, and railed against the LGBTQ community as a guest on an anti-Semitic Holocaust denier’s podcast last month. Neiders was suspended from Twitter for tweeting, “Let’s start rounding up people who participate in Pride events.”
In June 2021, the chair of the Williamson County, Tenn., chapter of Moms for Liberty filed a complaint with state officials that the school district’s curriculum violated a new state law that bans the teaching of ideas related to critical race theory. Specific complaints were made about texts featuring Martin Luther King Jr., Ruby Bridges, Civil Rights Movement protests, and school segregation.
The complaint criticized teaching about police brutality against civil rights demonstrators in the 1960s because it presented a “negative view of Firemen and police.” It said that a fictional account of the Civil War was deemed unsuitable for fifth graders because of its depictions of “out of marriage families between white men and black women.” A picture book about seahorses was condemned for depicting “mating seahorses with pictures of positions and discussion of the male carrying the eggs.”
In Florida, the group has offered bounties for tips on teachers who they claim teach critical race theory in the classroom. Moms for Liberty in New Hampshire also offered a bounty to anyone who “caught” teachers introducing texts or lessons in violation of the state’s new law restricting discussions of race in school classrooms.
In August 2022, a Moms for Liberty activist advocated for separating LGBTQ students into “specialized” classes “like for example children with autism, Down Syndrome.” In July 2022, the Moms for Liberty Twitter account was suspended for criticizing a California gender-affirming healthcare bill.
Moms for Liberty is aligned with another group, “No Left Turn in Education,” a leading opponent of critical race theory education. The group and its founder Elana Yaron Fishbein have compared the efforts of educators to those of Pol Pot, Vladimir Lenin, and Adolf Hitler. The group also claims that “black bigotry towards whites’’ is a “very real problem,” and that an educational video used in schools doesn’t cover violence by Black people.
The No Left Turn Facebook page complained about an educational video that held up George Floyd “as a martyr and hero” while he “was resisting arrest” and “overlooks the fact that most of [the violence against Black people (is) caused by …..black people.” The group also has posted anti-LGBTQ material, telling activists to “stay away from our kids” and suggested that accepting LGBTQ children represents the “dismantling of the family unit!”
Marriott has 30 brands with 8,000 properties containing 1,423,044 rooms in 131 countries and territories. The company has been awarded a 100 percent score for the past nine years by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation for policies and practices relating to LGBTQ equality and inclusion. In 2018, Marriott International launched #Lovetravels Beyond Barriers to provide $500,000 to groups and individuals advocating for inclusion, equality, peace and human rights.
“As a hospitality company, it is our responsibility — and not one that we take lightly — to provide safe and welcoming spaces for our guests and associates every day to make a positive impact on diverse communities,” said Cherilyn Williams, director, Global Portfolio Marketing at Marriott International.
Marriott International also has been a Global Partner of IGLTA, the International LGBTQ+ Travel Association. The IGLTA was founded in 1983 and provides free travel resources and information “to promote equality and safety within LGBTQ+ tourism worldwide.”
Marriott hosted the Annual IGLTA Global Convention in 2017 at the Vinoy® Renaissance Hotel and Golf Club in St. Petersburg, Fla., and the following year, for IGLTA’s 35th Anniversary Global Convention, at the Westin Harbour Castle in Toronto, Canada.
Marriott has had partnerships with other LGBTQ+ causes and nonprofits including the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the National LGBTQ Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC), the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) as well as Immigration Equality and PFLAG.
The director of the “New Jersey Public Education Coalition” has collected 10,423 signatures on a petition on Change.org. calling on Anthony Capuano, CEO of Marriott International, to refuse to host the Moms for Liberty conference and “JUST SAY NO TO HATE!!”
“It is a violation of Marriott’s corporate policy and an insult to their LGBTQ employees and all Americans for them to allow Moms for Liberty to use their property,” said Michael Gottesman, founder of New Jersey Public Education Coalition.
Gottesman, a retired lawyer, formed the coalition in May after he “saw the writing on the wall when right-wing radical forces began an organized attack on our school boards and public school system.”
“An alarm went off because my first thought was if these people are able to take over our school boards, what will our public schools look like when my 2–1/2 year-old granddaughter attends them in a couple of years?” Gottesman said.
He said he formed the organization and has spoken at local school board meetings “to dispel the misinformation and stop the intimidation by people who were supported by well-organized and well-funded entities that spewed hate, racism and intolerance, seeking to turn the clock back 50 to 100 years.”
Gottesman said that last fall, members of Moms for Liberty came to his hometown of Wayne “and told our school board and our residents that they didn’t know how to run our schools. Imagine that. Outsiders telling the good people of my town that we were doing it wrong.”
He said that Moms for Liberty is a hate group that is anti-diversity, anti-inclusion and anti-LGBTQ+.
“And what do they want to change?” said Gottesman. “Acceptance, understanding, curiosity on their watch would be replaced with fear, hate, and racism.”