Ari Gold, a gay pop star, was the target of homophobia on a Catskills-bound Short Line Bus last weekend in an incident that is being compared to Rosa Parks' famous stand in Montgomery.
According to the Village Voice's Michael Musto, who broke the story, Gold was holding hands with his boyfriend in the front seat of the bus when the bus driver asked him to move to the back. When Gold said no, the driver called the police:
"Then he pulled over," says Gold. "The state trooper came and asked what the problem is, and he said that the way were were sitting was making him uncomfortable and he wanted us off the bus. "The trooper said nothing was illegal and he needs to continue to drive." Gold made an announcement to the other passengers, explaining that they had been pulled over to wait for the state trooper because he was holding hands with a man. They all seemed deeply pissed at the blatant homophobia. Gold -- the gay Rosa Parks -- will be filing charges.
The Advocate has an interview with a woman who was a passenger on the bus. (Charmingly, the magazine misspells the name of the woman's hometown, Livingston Manor):
Fortunately another passenger offered to be a witness for Gold and Nelson, and The Advocate has exclusively corroborated the men’s story with Florence Mattersdorfer of Livingston Manner, NY. Mattersdorfer says she and her husband have been longtime advocates of LGBT equality, and so she was disturbed by the way Gold and Nelson were treated. She says it was completely without provocation.
"It was certainly unprovoked in my opinion and it was [due to the driver's] personal bias," Mattersdorfer says. "He was offended by them. And I don’t believe that had it been a man and a woman he would have made an issue out of it because they were not doing anything at all that was inappropriate in my opinion."
Mattersdorfer does reveal that, besides holding hands and listening to music, Gold had his leg wrapped over Nelson's, which Gold later confirmed.
The story is ricocheting around gay and celebrity blogs on the internet, prompting the president of Hudson Transit Lines, George Grieve, to issue a statement distancing Short Line from its driver's behavior. The Village Voice has the statement in a follow-up blog post:
"We will continue to investigate this incident until we are sure we have all the facts at which time we will take the appropriate disciplinary and remedial action. We apologize for the insensitive action of our driver and can assure you we will take the necessary steps to make sure this does not happen again.
Gold, who grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family, was heading to the Catskills to visit them when the incident occurred. He isn't mollified by the company's statement. On his Twitter and Facebook feeds yesterday, Gold wrote:
I look forward to telling the ENTIRE story of what happened on that bus ride to the catskills.
7/16/11 update: Proof that there is karma: The Advocate may have misspelled "Manor," but I misspelled "Livingston." This post has been corrected.
