Dondi Morse, left, and Latisha Pennington
In today’s paper, I wrote about an incident that happened at the State Fair of Texas last weekend. A couple was called over to a booth with their seven-year-old daughter to win a prize. Instead, they were subjected to an anti-gay tirade that left their daughter in tears.
Latisha Pennington contacted fair officials but after getting few results she called Dallas Voice. I suggested she contact Craig Holcomb, a former city council member who is openly gay and runs Friends of Fair Park.
I got in touch with the public relations office, which assured me that Fair Director Kelly Pound had already had a talk with the folks at the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship in America booth, where the verbal assault took place.
I mentioned that although I would never advocate, only report, my article would include the name of the group and their booth location. The public relations office decided to pay the group another visit.
Thursday night, Pennington and her partner Dondi Morse got word from Holcomb that the man who hurled the epithets at them would no longer be working at the booth at the fair. The group renting the booth would be sending the family a letter of apology. And the fair sent them tickets for a return visit.
The next step would have been filing a complaint with the Dallas Fair Housing Office, the department that handles all claims of discrimination. None of that is necessary now. It’s nice to work on a story that resolves itself with an apology and an understanding of why something that happened was so wrong.
