A story caught my attention and had me seeing red. So, naturally, I thought I’d share (because why be ticked all by myself, right?).

Early last week, I heard about the site fabulis – a gay-themed travel start-up. They launch a little later this year, but they have a whole slew of cute and interesting little videos up on the site about how individuals are fabulis – and what makes them fabulis (one cutie talks about how his mom being awesome is what makes him fabulis). In this case, all the vids are PG-13 or less, and some of them are irritating, some cute, a standard internet variety. Anyway, nothing objectionable in the content except that it’s mostly gay people talking about *gasp* being gay (as well as a variety of other topics).

The way I heard about them is through Twitter. But the story was so jaw-dropping, I’ve been following along.

Here’s the deal:  fabulis evidently ran afoul of Citibank. Jason Goldberg, one of the founders of fabulis, blogged about it starting here.  The gist is that Citibank blocked fabulis’s bank account (freezing it so they couldn’t get access to their money) on the grounds of objectionable content on their website. Bwah? The only possible objection is the idea that the site is gay-themed. And, btw, where do they get off blocking access to a person/business’s money without appropriate notice. That’s right – no notice. They just cut them off without even bothering to inform them. Needless to say, Goldberg was less than pleased. Being a smart guy, he called the bank and sought an explanation.  Initially, all he got was “we’ll check into it” – but his money was still stuck.

After a discussion with an account manager, fabulis was informed that their website content was not in compliance with Citi’s policies, so would they please terminate the account.  Goldberg gave a bit more information here. And, yeah, this looks a lot like gay-bashing. Especially when you consider that Citibank evidently did something similar here.

Now, at this point, Goldberg has been hitting Twitter and various other avenues and getting the word out. It’s picked up by bloggers, twitters, and starting to make inroads into the print press.

Let the backpedaling begin. Citibank says … uh… we didn’t mean that. Sure, three separate people told you that and read you the policies, but we didn’t mean it. And we’re really, really sorry. Really sorry.

But the backpedaling, the double talk, and the somewhat generic apology don’t erase the stink from this little fiasco – and other bloggers agree. Switched sums up my viewpoint handily. Alistair Fairweather points out the blatant idiocy of the move, and the Wall Street Journal and NPR’s Marketplace even wade in.

Here’s my thing. Leaving aside my personal opinion on the moral idiocy and the stupidity of alienating the gay market and their money, Citibank can be homophobic if it wants – they have the right to refuse to do business with whomever they choose. What they DON’T have the right to do is open the account for fabulis and then, without notice, freeze that account. And then piddle around before asking fabulis to terminate the account. In the (approximately) 5 days this took to play out, fabulis did not have access to its own money, but Citibank did – which means that they were making money on fabulis for that time period while fabulis was getting jerked around. You know, in any other place that would be called… theft. I have your stuff and I’m not giving it back. At the very least, it would be fraud – taking someone’s money without the intention of providing the agreed upon service.

Frankly, Goldberg is more forgiving than I am – and good for him for being a better person. But I can tell you that none of MY money is going to Citibank. I write objectionable content – Lord only knows what they’d do to my money.

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