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It wasn't exactly a warm welcome for a couple of Albuquerque visitors.

It was the week of Albuquerque’s Pride Festival when a gay couple says they flew into the city.

Just minutes after arriving and getting their bags, they said a shuttle bus driver at the airport forced them to sit in the back of the bus because they were holding hands.

Ron McCoy and his partner, Chris Bowers, flew into Albuquerque from Portland, Ore., on Friday, June 28 — two days after the nation's highest court made historic rulings for same-sex marriage couples.

The couple was here for a long-awaited road trip through the Southwest, but their excitement soon died down.

McCoy said he and his partner sat in the front of a shuttle bus, holding hands when a driver discriminated against them.

“I saw him look at us, look down at his hands and he looked so angry,” McCoy said. “He just blurted out at me, he goes, “'Okay, if you're going to do that, you're going to the back of the bus.'"

Shocked and not wanting to cause problems, the couple obeyed.

Once the shuttle stopped at its destination, however, the couple asked the driver why he forced them to move.

“I said, ‘I think it was because you didn't like the fact that I was holding my partner's hand.' He goes, ‘See, now you're telling on yourself.’ My partner responds, 'Well, that's discrimination,' and the driver responds, ‘You're telling on yourself again,’” McCoy said.

A woman, originally from Albuquerque, witnessed the confrontation and jumped in.

“I told the bus driver that I was completely appalled that anybody would be treated this way,” said Bernadette Aguirre.

“And the driver looks back at us and goes, 'I'll show you what's appalling,' and he points to us,” McCoy said.

The Sunport contracts with private company, Standard Parking, to run the rental car shuttle buses. http://www.krqe.com/dpp/features/gay-couple-forced-to-back-of-bus

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The driver then had the nerve to call a state trooper for the gesture. Ari made an announcement to the other passengers on the bus, explaining that they had pulled over to wait for the officer, who naturally, saw nothing wrong with what Ari was doing.

"Haven't reached anyone from Shortline yet-I'll call Lamda Legal to see if there's any action to take or at least make sure Shortline gives better employee training. I stood up to the driver despite my racing heart, I can only imagine what that might have done to someone who couldn't." http://perezhilton.com/2011-07-13-ari-gold-to-file-charges-against-bus
-driver-who-told-him-to-go-to-back-of-bus-for-holding-hands#.Uf695Inn_cs]

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Ronald McCoy noted he's always had to deal with homophobia and ignorance, but in this case, the source of the bigotry is cause for alarm.

“I’ve had people call me faggot. I’ve had people tell me that they hope I catch AIDS and die, but the difference was those were individuals being jerks and expressing their own bigoted, biased hate. But this was a guy operating a shuttle on behalf of the city of Albuquerque,” McCoy said.

Bill Alberti is the manager of Standard Parking, the company that operates the shuttle. He said a driver has the right to ask a customer to move if they are unruly and causing a disturbance. But even this is done with the utmost courtesy and only to promote safety for both the passengers and the driver, he said.

“From what I understand, those people were just holding hands and he [the driver] just got off on the wrong foot,” Alberti said. “On an issue like this, I think he overstepped a little bit.” He added that to ensure this unfortunate incident isn’t repeated, the company will be conducting additional sensitivity and non-harassment training for all its employees.

City of Albuquerque aviation spokesman Daniel Jiron said "This something that absolutely should not have happened. This is our first complaint we ever received, but that is one too many". (The Sunport Airport contracts its shuttle buses out to Standard Parking. 'We immediately got in touch with Standard Parking to assess what exactly happened. They acknowledged this was a mistake on the part of the driver.' http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2384166/Gay-couple-forced-bus-
Albuquerque-holding-hands--day-Gay-Pride-week-began.html#ixzz2b2HgOQJQ)

The Alibi spoke with the shuttle driver, Mychael Jones, and he said that he asked the couple to move to the back of the bus because he didn't want the “women and children” to see the couple's “inappropriate behavior.” But when asked to explain what he defined as “inappropriate behavior,” he refused to comment.

McCoy said the fact that none of the people who witnessed this public shaming came to his defense is equally troubling. He said during their exchange with the bus driver, most passengers suddenly became engrossed in their cell phones—except for one woman who was getting on the bus as they were getting off.

Former Albuquerque resident Bernadette Aguirre was heading to catch a flight when she witnessed part of the exchange between the driver and the couple. She said that after overhearing some of the rude things the driver said to the couple, she couldn’t help but intervene. “Any type of discrimination needs to be stood up against and we need to do it together. We would want that if it happened to one of us,” Aguirre said.

The driver’s actions show us that we have a long way to go in our fight for true equality and that much of society is blind to their own discriminatory feelings, misguided anger and ungrounded prejudices, McCoy said.

For every case like this, there are probably a hundred times more cases where people are subtly and covertly discriminated against. It’s not like everyone is warm and embracing, and there is this one bigot. There are several shades of gray and this is just one of the extremes,” he said. “There are an awful lot of in-betweens, and this guy was angry, scared and phobic enough that he was confident we were doing something morally wrong and he was morally right.” http://alibi.com/news/44947/Back-of-the-Bus.html

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