New Yorkers are being urged by LGBT activists to boycott the Beverly Hills Hotel and the Bel-Air Hotel in Los Angeles because they are owned by the Sultan of Brunei, where new laws call for death by stoning as punishment for gay sex.
The iconic hotels are part of the Dorchester Collection, which also has 5-star hotels in London, Paris, Rome and Milan.
The Sultan, who rules his oil-rich, Islamic nation on the island of Borneo with medieval authority, is worth $20 billion.
“It’s archaic. It’s brutal. It’s disgraceful,” Allen Roskoff, president of the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club, told me. “These hotels should be shunned by everyone, regardless of their sexual orientation. They should be put out of business. My guess is they [Brunei authorities] don’t treat women much better.”
Roskoff and fellow activists in the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community say events and bookings are already being canceled. “We are sending letters to everyone in the travel industry,” Roskoff said.
The Beverly Hills Hotel — where many a starlet was discovered by the pool, and where generations of stars met in the Polo Lounge — derives much of its business from the nearby gay community in West Hollywood.
“We do not tolerate any form of discrimination of any kind,” the Beverly Hills Hotel said in a statement to the Hollywood Reporter. “The laws and policies that govern how we run our hotel have nothing to do with the laws that exist in any other country.”
But the activists intend to continue the boycott until the Sultan changes the law in Brunei.