Young Boy Banned From Swimming Pool Because He Has Two Dads
A same-sex couple who have a two-year old son have been denied access to a health club’s swimming pool because they are a same-sex couple. The Roanoke Athletic Club, which is owned by a regional Virginia medical provider, Carilion Clinic, has revoked the membership of the family after they realized the family was headed by two gay dads.
UPDATE:Â Success! Young Boy With Two Gay Dads Will Be Allowed In Swimming Pool!
Via a Change.org petition written by Mark Lynn Ferguson:
On May 15, Will Trinkle, a real estate agent in Roanoke, Virginia, applied for membership at the Roanoke Athletic Club, a gym that is owned by the regional medical provider Carilion Clinic. He and his partner Juan Granados wanted to take their 2-yeard-old son Oliver Trinkle-Granados to the gym’s outdoor pool during the summer months.
Only children on family memberships are allowed to use the pool, so Trinkle signed up for a family plan. His application was accepted and processed, clearly listing him, his same sex partner, and their child as members.
Nine days later, a representative from the gym contacted Trinkle and told him that his application was processed by mistake. According to Trinkle, the representative said that the company was “‘tightening policies’ so no families like us would ever ‘get as far’ as we had.†The representative went on to claim that Roanoke Athletic Club is following Virginia state law, which does not recognize same sex marriage.
“We were really surprised. It’s like someone punched us in the stomach,” Trinkle says, “We couldn’t imagine this kind of discrimination.”
The fact that a couple isn’t legally wed is hardly a defense for treating them as second class citizens. According to the U.S. Census Bureau there were more than 8 million unmarried couples living together in 2010. Some are opposite sex; some are same sex. All of them deserve to be recognized as families by local businesses.
This is especially true when that business is a healthcare provider that serves nearly 1 million people. In addition to the Roanoke Athletic Club, Carilion Clinic operates seven hospitals in Southwest Virginia, more than 150 other medical practice sites, and a new, high-profile medical school that it recently launched in partnership with Virginia Tech.
If Carilion won’t give unmarried couples access to a pool, how will it treat them at a hospital?
Hospital visitation rights are crucial. If Carilion gets access to a swimming pool wrong, how right can they get access to a hospital. Federal regulations, if the medical provider gets support from the federal government, say, via Medicare, prohibits denying access to same-sex partners.
But wait, there’s more.
Yesterday, Towleroad reported:
According to Chanda Ingram and Nikki Hyler, another Carilion-owned club, the Botetourt Athletic Club, turned them away after learning they are lesbians.
Local NBC station WSLS reports:
Ingram said she looked at the BAC [Botetourt Athletic Club] with her then 7 year old daughter, Abby.
Ingram claims the BAC representative was just about to grant her the family membership when he asked if her “husband” could come in and sign the paperwork.
When she explained she had no husband, instead she had a partner, Ingram said the BAC employee immediately rescinded the offer for family membership.
“I was truly speechless,” Ingram said. “We just walked out at that point.”
Carilion, as you can imagine, had no comment.
But wait, there’s more.
Via the Roanoke Times last week:
A maintenance worker at Carilion Clinic is claiming he endured discrimination and racial harassment that included the display of shackles and a noose in his workplace.
Vernell Coles, who is black, makes the allegations in a lawsuit filed in Roanoke’s federal court.
The case was allowed to move forward Tuesday, when District Court Judge Glen Conrad said he was not inclined to dismiss the lawsuit at Carilion’s request.
The department that does maintenance work for Carilion’s medical and office complex is “all-white, all the time,” said Terry Grimes, a Roanoke lawyer who filed the lawsuit.
“It’s fairly egregious behavior.”
In the lawsuit, Coles claims he was passed over for a promotion in a hostile work environment where both managers and some co-workers used racial slurs.
The lawsuit does not provide details of just where the noose and shackles were displayed on Carilion property, but claims they were part of a “racially hostile and offensive work environment” that persisted during Coles’ 15 years of employment.
…
In the pleadings, Coles states that one manager told him he would never advance because he was a “worthless n—–.”
Another stated that Coles only got his job with the assistance of the NAACP, and that he was a “lazy n—–,” the lawsuit claims.
Gays, lesbians, and blacks. Who’s next?
Image of the swimming pool at Carilion
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
