Lesbian Couple At A Seattle Mariners Game Told To 'Stop Being Affectionate'

So let's get this straight (no pun intended), two women, who paid for a ticket can't give each other a couple of pecks on the lips, but the "athletes" (it is baseball) can not only grab their crotches on the field but get a spanking from other players while doing it. Got it.

An incident involving a lesbian couple at a Seattle Mariners game Friday night has the team both apologizing to and pointing fingers at the couple. The two women are left wondering why they were told that their basic displays of public affection were deemed inappropriate by the people who complained, including a Mariners staffer.

On Friday, Giuliana Garcia and Calista Nabors attended the Mariners' home game against the Anaheim Angels. Garcia, a San Francisco Giants fan, was there to watch the Angels' new pitcher, Tim Lincecum, a former Giant who lasted three innings that night against some hot Mariners bats.

Sometime around the seventh inning, the couple was on the concourse waiting for friends when they were approached by an usher and told that a complaint had been filed against them; They needed to stop "being affectionate" because this was a "family friendly environment" and their actions were against the park's code of conduct, the women said they were told. That code of conduct bans "displays of affection not appropriate in a public, family setting."

They visited guest services, where the couple said they received an immediate, unequivocal apology.

After receiving the voicemail, Garcia was pleased with the Mariners' response, even if she was still shaken that someone would complain about two lesbians showing affection. She felt the team was handling the incident well, and that it was an isolated incident. Still, she wanted to speak out about the incident publicly so other teams could get ahead of these kinds of issues and make sure "this doesn't happen to anybody else."

Despite the overt apology by Swisher, and her absolving the couple of any wrongdoing in the voicemail, on Tuesday Mariners spokesperson Rebecca Hale spun a completely different story about what triggered the incident on Friday, telling Outsports that, according to reports, the couple acted inappropriately.

Garcia was appalled by the new accusations.

"That's not true at all," Garcia said. "They never said that to us. The entire line they've given me is that they recognized we were just embracing and we shouldn't have been approached in the first place. So that's interesting that they have never shared that complaint to me in any correspondence. We would never make out in public. We would never do that in public. It was just a quick kiss."

Garcia and Nabors are now confused as to where they stand with the team. While they thought they had been invited back to Safeco Field for a game, given Hale's comments they now fear they are the targets of accusations of wrongdoing. Either way, they continue to hope that every MLB team, including the Mariners, builds an understanding of public displays of affection between same-sex couples. Cont.

Story from - Out Sports