Wal-Mart Bans Gay Couple For Shoplifting (Even Though They Didn’t Do It)

A Wal-Mart in rural Indiana detained two gay attorneys and their two adopted special needs sons and then banned them from patronizing any store in the chain, even though video records proved that the couple had not shoplifted the packages of Bic lighters that employees claimed they had. One of the men had used the store’s self-checkout lane and security cameras clearly showed him scanning the items in question. According to the couple, Wal-Mart security threatened them in the store’s detention room and made disparaging remarks about their “lifestyle.”

Even after their innocence was proven by the store’s own surveillance, Wal-Mart refused to compensate the couple for their ruined frozen groceries and is even demanding that they pay ten times the value of the items they were wrongly accused of stealing. The couple says they can’t sue, because Wal-Mart historically “plays hardball” on such actions and they don’t have “a couple of million dollars” to proceed.