Country Club Votes To Ban Same-Sex Family Membership

Couple Martha Daas, right, and Shannon Bowman tried to get a family membership at the Mallory Country Club, but were denied. Not enough club members voted to change the bylaws that would allow same-sex couples to get a family membership, they said. Photo of the family on the front porch of their home in Norfolk with Maggie Bowman-Runnells, left, and Oliver Bowman-Daas. (L. Todd Spencer | The Virginian-Pilot)

Shannon Bowman and Martha Daas can join the Mallory Country Club, but not as a family. That’s a problem for the two women, who united in what they consider a wedding more than two years ago, live under the same roof and are raising two children together.

As a married couple, they would pay $1,000 to join the club and an annual rate of $630, said Lynn Tiedge, a club member. That’s the same amount an individual pays to be in the club in West Ghent, Tiedge said.

As Bowman and Daas see it, they are being asked to pay double the rate a married couple pays. Though Virginia law does not allow same-sex couples to wed, the women consider themselves married and would legally marry in the state if they could, they said.

Besides the membership rate, there’s a bigger predicament to them.

“It’s not the money issue,” Bowman said. “It’s the principal point that we’re not accepted as a family.”

If a vote taken by Mallory Country Club members is any indication, the fact that the family rate is not extended to cohabiting gay couples who are raising children is a concern of many members too. For them, it’s not enough that gay people can join the club as individuals.

About 180 votes were cast to support family memberships for same-sex couples with children, according to the club’s Web site, at www.mallorycountryclub.com. Roughly 126 votes were cast against it.

For the measure to pass, a two-thirds favorable vote is required, said Tiedge, who supports the measure and said she worked with at least 15 other club members to revise the club’s bylaws to provide for it. Two-thirds of the 311 ballots cast would have been roughly 207 votes.

“We recognize that heterosexual couples can marry and homosexuals couples can’t,” Tiedge said.

Tiedge contends that those who voted against the measure are not necessarily against same-sex couples with children qualifying for a family membership but that they may have had problems with how the proposed revised bylaws were worded.

Numerous club members contacted for this story did not return calls or did not want to comment publicly. [READ MORE]

This post was originally published via PilotOnline.com