Toy Donor Accuses Ronald McDonald House of Discriminating Against Lesbians

In this video, “Peppermint Patty” (great name!) describes having her donations turned away by a Ronald McDonald House worker, who explained that she wouldn’t accept toys from a lesbian.

The video is, frankly, harrowing to watch, because Peppermint Patty is so shattered. Some people might find her reaction disproportionate – after all, far worse discrimination happens to queers every day than having their handmade teddy bears turned away by a Ronald McDonald House volunteer. It’s not like she was kept out of her lover’s hospital room, or refused the chance to marry, or beaten up, right?

But humans are funny creatures, not logic machines. Probably this same woman could experience being turned away from a church, or for a marriage license, and be pissed off and hurt but not in tears – because that sort of discrimination is expected. We mentally steel ourselves for the rejection. Our defenses are up.

But to have a Ronald McDonald House volunteer suddenly and arbitrarily turn away your donated toys because you’re a lesbian – that’s different. That’s being told – at a point when you’re totally unprepared and all your mental shields are down – that you really are worthless, that every bad thing society has every told you about yourself is true, that you are a pariah. This sort of blatant, out-of-the-blue othering is the sort of thing that could easily drive me to tears, to ripping my hair out, and to screaming fits in my bedroom – although I wouldn’t be brave enough to put it on a YouTube video, as Peppermint Patty did.

This sort of thing happens all the time, and the wounds are deep and they sting like hell. How much energy do the pariah classes – lesbians in this case, but also people of color, queers and trans of all sorts, the disabled, fat people, femme men, and others – spend just fighting internalized self-doubt and self-loathing? How much does this sort of crap set us back on a daily basis? How much more could we accomplish if we didn’t have all those feelings brought to the surface by worthless assholes like the RMH worker?

I can’t find an email for Ronald McDonald House (which, Peppermint Patty notes, is not actually owned by the McDonalds corporation), but there are phone and fax numbers here.

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25 Responses to Toy Donor Accuses Ronald McDonald House of Discriminating Against Lesbians

  1. Pingback: MoveOnAndShutUp.org | You won't like me very much.

  2. Robert says:

    That’s despicable. It doesn’t even make any sense; who gives a damn where the toys came from.

  3. RonF says:

    They may not be owned by McDonalds, but I’m sure they use “Ronald McDonald” at McDonalds’ sufferance. A word to Oakbrook (where MickyD’s world HQ is) would be in order.

  4. Agnostic says:

    Is there any other information? I feel strange about calling Ronald McDonald House and complaining that one of their workers somewhere turned away toys from a lesbian. That seems vague and unlikely to reach the important decisionmakers who can do something about this.

  5. Carrie Jo says:

    That’s pretty damn sad. I hope they issue her a public appology. That’s the least they could do.

  6. Myca says:

    Oh my god. I just cried along with her. I am so upset and sad and fucking furious, I just . . . I just will never understand how small and petty and fucking vicious some people can be.

    I’m writing to the Ronald McDonald house now.

  7. ms_xeno says:

    I have to agree with Agnostic. Not because I believe the woman’s making shit up, but because I’d like to be able to at least cite in a protest letter where and when this happened. Otherwise, the people in charge couldn’t possibly be motivated to admit that they need to issue some kind of directive to their staff. Why should they, when there’s nothing to back up the complaint but one video on YouTube. It would be easy for them to make up some b.s. excuse about how the toys must have been rejected for some other reason.

    I hope that if other GLBT folks who’ve been treated like dirt by that asshole volunteer see the video, they’ll step forward and reveal a pattern. Because I’m guessing there is one. Grrrr…

  8. Sara says:

    Did you all see PeppermintPatti’s reaction to the NJ gay marriage ruling? It truly made me tear up – it’s beautiful. And so sad to see her so heartbroken a few days later.

    See her reaction here:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk3O5_UfW2I

  9. Daran says:

    Um, I can’t see a link to the video anywhere.

    Without having seen it, I’m limited in my comments, but I would be very surprised if RMH instructed or would support their employees behaving like this.

  10. Robert says:

    Daran – the video is embedded right here. Just click the play button.

  11. Daran says:

    Ah. The browser I’m using (Konqueror) doesn’t ‘do’ embedded youtube. I can’t even see the button. No problem, switching to Firefox…

  12. Fred Vincy says:

    This is so sad and wrong.

    I hope Patty reads Alas and knows she has a lot of support too.

  13. Dreama says:

    Does this woman have some website elsewhere, a blog or something, where she lets people know that she’s uploading new videos to YouTube? The story is awful, the video is compelling and harrowing and heartbreaking, but there needs to be more to it before anyone can do anything, and lack of that information is leaving a nasty impotent feeling here. Must act, can’t act.

  14. dan l says:

    I can’t find an email for Ronald McDonald House (which, Peppermint Patty notes, is not actually owned by the McDonalds corporation), but there are phone and fax numbers here.

    I’m not sure what the ownership scheme is for RMH, however, I can state with absolute certainty that the contact address,

    Ronald McDonald House Charities
    One Kroc Drive
    Oak Brook, IL 60523
    Phone: 630-623-7048
    Fax: 630-623-7488

    is, in fact, McDonalds corporate head quarters.

  15. Barbara says:

    Well, fwiw, IIRC, some psychologists who studied the impact of segregation in the South concluded that small acts of segregation, for instance, giving “mixed” taps to whites and unmixed taps to blacks in their respective, segregated restrooms, were actually more psychologically harmful than “big” acts of segregation, like not permitting blacks to attend premier universities. One can understand, at some level, why someone would want an advantage over something so important as a university level education, just as it’s probably more understandable why people react emotionally on the issue of marriage, even if both are demonstrably unjust. But to purposefully go out of your way to slight or reject someone on things that don’t matter (like whether tap water is mixed) requires deep and visceral animus. Rejecting charity from a lesbian (or a black or a Muslim) can only be attributed to hate and prejudice, not competition for privilege or principled if wrongheaded disagreement. Just really, really awful.

  16. Robert says:

    Barbara, I think that’s dead on. Thanks for formulating it; I couldn’t wrap my head around why this bothered me. It’s precisely the triviality of the slight that is so hurtful, because there’s no (perhaps unpopular) moral position being adhered to; it’s a fuck you for fuck you’s sake.

  17. dan l says:

    I had a couple two tree cocktails with a friend of mine who’s a lower level PR guy for McD’s. He says (and he’s a pretty reliable cat, with very little reason to lie) that McDonalds Corporate was made aware of this late Friday.

    Just saying.

  18. dan l says:

    BTW if anybody is curious:

    Each chapter of RMH is individually operated by a group of McD’s franchise owners, hospital board types, and NPO types. McDonalds Corporate maintains a working relationship with their central administration, but has very little to do with the workings at a given chapter.

    It’s like……franchised charity.

  19. Almi says:

    That employee does not seem to care much about the children she supposed to be helping. She obviously feels that the need to express her own ignorant prejudice like that is more important. Ridicules! I hope she will suffer some consequences…

    I am really sorry Peppermint Patty had to experience that. It is horrible to think about how often these things happen. A “small incident” like that, it is often given very little attention, but it can hurt more than punches and beatings …..

  20. La Lubu says:

    As someone who had occasion to stay in a RMH, I’ll vouch for what dan l said…..it’s a franchised charity. I didn’t watch the video (dial-up internet service is not video-friendly), so it isn’t clear to me if this was an isolated act of bigotry by a volunteer, or a board-driven official policy of bigotry.

    Amp, where did this happen? Can you give any background to this for those of us who can’t access the video? I’d be happy to write a letter to the board of directors of this particular RMH, if I knew where it was.

  21. RonF says:

    Yep, that’s McD’s HQ alright, I’m over there about once a month for Scouting reasons. And like I say, Ronald McDonald is a McD’s trademark. While the operations of the RMH are independent of McD’s, their use of that trademark isn’t, and that gives McD’s leverage over them.

  22. Daran says:

    Uh, totally borked the last post; please delete it. Here’s what I meant to say:

    Sara:

    See her reaction here:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk3O5_UfW2I

    Because of my browser ‘issues’, I watched this one before the one embedded in Amp’s post. The contrast couldn’t be more marked. This one is like watching a kid at Christmas. In the other, she seemed to have aged a decade and a half.

    A couple of comments: Firstly Amp’s title is misleading. The ‘accusation’ is clearly leveled at one of RMH’s workers, not at RMH itself. It’s unlikely that either RMH or McDonald’s inc. would support this.

    On the other hand, despite trumpetting the diversity of their workforce, there’s no mention of gays or lesbians. In fact, a Google search turns up no instances of the words “sexuality”, “lesbian”, or “gay” (except as a personal name), anywhere on either the corporate or charity sites, so it would certainly be legitimate to ask them whether their antidiscrimination policies extend to a person’s sexuality.

  23. Daran says:

    Hmmm. Maybe a single end blockquote is what is needed as a quick fix to unbork the above

    Until Amp sorts it out properly.

  24. Ampersand says:

    I thought I had sorted it out. Is it still borked on your browser?

  25. Daran says:

    No, you fixed it when you deleted the post.

    You’re just too quick for me. :-)

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