LITTLE ROCK — Willow Springs Water Park has provided relief for those seeking to escape Arkansas’ heat for 84 summers.
But at the tail end of this scorching season, the pine ringed, sandy-bottomed Little Rock swimming hole with the old metal slide and concrete waterslide has made a splash of a less satisfying sort for owner David Ratliff.
Ratliff is at odds with a North Little Rock nonprofit’s youth program, which is run by a former gang member, and a national atheist organization over a discount offered church groups, one that he refused to extend to the secular nonprofit Reaching our Children and Neighborhoods or R.O.C.A.N.
At issue is a $5 Monday discount Ratliff offered church groups to drum up business on the slowest day of the week. The regular admission price for children ages 4-15 is $10.
R.O.C.A.N Executive Director Leifel Jackson, a former gang member with a prominent role in the 1994 HBO documentary Banging in Little Rock, contacted the park around July 31 to see if his group - made up primarily of elementary school aged children - qualified for the discount. Ratliff said the group didn’t.
Another R.O.C.A.N official, Jeff Poleet, contacted Freedom From Religion, a Madison, Wis., group that supports the separation of church and state, and seeks to protect the rights of nonbelievers.
Freedom From Religion wrote Ratliff a letter Aug. 2 calling his action a “serious civil rights concern,” and expressing pleasure that “this illegal practice has ceased.”
Except it hasn’t. And some legal scholars say there is nothing illegal about what Ratliff is doing.
On Thursday, Ratliff, who originally said he would scrap the discount, said he was standing his ground. Today is the last Monday remaining in the park’s summer schedule and the church-group discount will be offered, he said.
“My civil rights have been trampled on here,” he said. “I’m not going to stop doing it because of Freedom From Religion. I could care less what they think.”
Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of Freedom From Religion, said the group will research it options, but said Ratliff is violating federal and state civil-rights laws, which protect against religious discrimination.
“He can’t say I’m going to charge you more money because you’re an atheist,” Gaylor said. “This water park owner has the opportunity to help children and to extend this discount to all charities. Why wouldn’t he want to? I’m only going to help you if you’re a little Christian? It’s mean.”
Poleet, R.O.C.A.N’s director, said about 35 children, ages 6 through 14, attend the North Little Rock facility on an average day, which functions as an air-conditioned, safe drop-in center for children, offering them meals and activities. Most of them are from low-income families, he said.
A trip earlier this summer to a Jacksonville water park had been a success, Poleet said, so the group decided to take another swim when they found out about the discount.
“We didn’t know about the religious requirement,” Poleet said. “But it strikes me as contrary to law. You can’t make people pay more for gas because they don’t go to church.”
Poleet said he plans to file a federal lawsuit if Ratliff continues his religious discount policy.
Ratliff said he offers military and senior-citizen discounts as well. He said one reason that he extended the discount to church groups was because they are so well-behaved.
“Football teams are the worst-behaved,” Ratliff said, adding that they can get a little boisterous.
Other area entertainment destinations offer similar church discounts. The Arkansas Travelers gives discounts to families who take church bulletins to some games.
Travelers General Manager Pete Laven didn’t return a call seeking comment.
Around the country, the issue of religious discounts has surfaced in minor league ballparks, county fairs and restaurants.
An Oklahoma City restaurant ended its church-bulletin discount last year after a letter from Freedom From Religion.
A Pennsylvania restaurant has continued its church-bulletin discount after modifying it to a “faith” discount after a similar letter from the group earlier this year, which filed a complaint with that state’s human relations commission.
According to the group’s tax filings, it sent out 565 such letters in 2011. The filing stated that the group has “ended” more than 100 “violations of church-state separation” without filing a lawsuit. Seven lawsuits were ongoing in 2011, according to the filing.
Recipients of the letters needn’t be intimidated, said Mathew Staver, founder and chairman of the Liberty Council, an Orlando, Fla.-based public-interest law firm and ministry that promotes conservative Christian values.
“This organization [Freedom From Religion] is on a seek-and-destroy mission around the country sending out letters that have no legal foundation. It’s smoke and mirrors,” Staver said.
Giving groups discounts isn’t the same as barring them from admission, which is what the federal Civil Rights Act protects against, he said.
Happy hours for women at bars and senior-citizen discounts are two common examples of discounts that are based on age and sex, categories also protected by federal law, Staver said.
Ratliff said his park is open to everyone and that, as a Christian, he considers it his ministry.
He’ll evaluate the policy over the winter.
“It might not have made us any money,” he said.
Arkansas, Pages 7 on 08/13/2012