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USDA rejects farmer’s application because he lives in ‘offensive’ Gay, Georgia
A farmer from US state of Georgia was upset when he learned his hometown was on the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) list of banned words.
Gene King, a cattle farmer from the community of Gay, Georgia, applied for a special interstate transport license with the department – but it was rejected because the computer system detected a banned word in his address.
King only learned of this when he called the USDA to check on the application’s status.
‘She said it’s kicking it out saying that’s an offensive word and won’t accept your application,’ he told Fox5 Atlanta.
As the computer system would always reject new applications made from an address in Gay, the department emailed King, telling him to change it to Bay and add a note – in all caps – that his hometown was in fact called Gay, so they could work around it.
But the farmer told the government worker on the phone with him he wouldn’t have it.
‘I want to submit it as Gay, Georgia, because that’s where I live,’ he said.
The government worker then proceeded to ask him whether he wanted a number or not. King did and changed his hometown’s name on the form – afterwards, the USDA could manually correct it to Gay.
‘I said ma’am. This is ridiculous,’ he told Fox5.
‘My name is Gene King. I live here in Gay, Ga. That’s G-A-Y, not B-A-Y.’
The USDA holds a database of words with bad connotations, the department said in a statement; it was created as part of the now replaced National Animal Identification System because ‘IT developers were concerned about the possibility of people attempting to create “bad” premises IDs’ as proof there was a problem with the program.
The post USDA rejects farmer’s application because he lives in ‘offensive’ Gay, Georgia appeared first on Gay Star News.
Stefanie Gerdes
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