OKC Gold’s Gym bans transgender woman

Tinsley Ariana Taylor Keefe. Facebook photo.

by Rob Howard
Associate Editor

Tinsley Ariana Taylor Keefe wasn’t sure what was up when the manager of the Gold’s Gym at Penn and Memorial Road in Oklahoma City wanted to talk. She had been a member of the gym for about two months. She says, “They knew I was trans at the time [that I enrolled]. They didn’t ask, I just told them, and showed them my ID.”

Keefe has a birth certificate, a driver’s license and a passport, all of which show her gender as female. She has had top surgery and takes hormones, but says that she hasn’t yet had bottom surgery. She had been using the women’s locker room at the gym since she became a member.

Then, last week, she got called into the gym office by Eddie, the manager. Also present was another employee named Adrian, she says. “They wanted to discuss ‘body parts’, the manager said. They didn’t tell me I couldn’t use the women’s locker room,” she said. But they urged her to use the “family” bathroom for changing, because they said, “A lot of people had complained,” said Keefe. She said they later indicated they had gotten only two complaints.

Then on Friday, Keefe says, “The District Manager came over and said he wanted to work something out.” Keefe has posted a YouTube video of the conversation with the district manager on her Facebook page of him refusing to respond to her objections and allegations of discrimination by telling her that the matter was in their lawyer’s hands.

“This has to do with our business decision,” he says on the video. “Until you discuss this with our attorneys, you will not be able to use this facility.” Because the person she was talking with represented himself as a district manager, Keefe says she assumes that she cannot use any Gold’s Gym.

Keefe plans to meet with her attorneys tomorrow (January 10). She says that this is discrimination. “It’s very hurtful, very hateful; this is part of what’s wrong with America.”

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Justice Department and the Education Department have all issued opinions or rulings that the term “sex” in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 encompasses sexual orientation and gender identity. Several courts have ruled in favor of transgender persons using bathrooms that correspond to their gender identity.

The Supreme Court is currently set to hear a case from Virginia in which a school district refused to allow a transgender male teenager to use the male bathroom or locker room. That ban is still in effect while the Supreme Court considers the case.

Keefe says the discrimination by Gold’s is clearly about sex because she has all three major ID documents stating she is a female.

She would like to get bottom surgery, “but it costs $17,000. After a federal district judge in Texas put the Obamacare ban on discrimination against transgender persons on hold,” she says, she doesn’t know if her insurance company will cover the surgery or not.

This isn’t the first time Gold’s Gym has been involved in controversy over LGBTQ rights. In 2010, there was a dispute over the CEO of the company donating over $2 million to right-wing causes. Most of the gyms are franchisees, and some took issue with the donations, and cancelled their relationship with the company.

Gold’s issued a statement at that time to the Huffington Post, which said in part, “For more than 45 years, Gold’s Gym has been welcoming and accepting of members from all walks of life. Diversity is a core part of the Gold’s Gym tradition and we have a zero tolerance policy for discrimination of any kind.

“We are proud to have a large and dedicated base of LGBT members in our gyms...and value our strong ties with the LGBT community. In addition, we are proud of our employees and franchisees around the world who are part of the LGBT community and who go to work every day to help people achieve their fitness goals.”

A phone call to the manager of the Gold’s Gym from which Keefe has been banned went unreturned as of the writing of this article.