OK, I know I’m talking about the Daily Mail here, but the comments on this story make me want to kill people. Story first:

When Suzanne Richards and Sarah Dobinson decided to sell their £650,000 home, they expected professional service from their estate agents.

Instead, they were left feeling ‘insulted and violated’ after a staff member outed them as a same-sex couple in a website advertisement.

Logging on to check how their period home was being marketed, they were horrified to find the word ‘lesbians’ in the space where prospective buyers would expect to see a reference number.

It’s a clear-cut case of an estate agent employee being an arsehole, and the firm has settled out of court for £5,000. Bring on the Mail readers!

But they don’t seem to be worried having their names and photographs in a national newspaper along with the “lesbian” comment.

Stating the truth is now is an offence in England.

Hypocrites .. they should be made to repay the money.

Anyone would think they were ashamed to be gay.

Oh, please, do me a favour. Are they lesbians or not? Are they afraid of what they are and therefore unwilling to admit it to others?
Is lesbians a derogatory term now? In this day and age they shouldn’t shy away from what they are.
Well at least they got a bit of money out of it. Can I claim money if someone calls me hetrosexual?

If the women are ashamed of their life style, why live it?

Am I missing something here – They Are lesbians – what’s the problem?
Five grand for stating the obvious.
“Shaking with disbelief” when they read the advert, but more than happy to give a statement and provide a nice piccy.

Absolutely ridiculous! If the advert had said the house was being sold by an architect and his wife, would this be discrimination against architects and heterosexual couples?

It’s not all bad, though. Beeper is clearly being forced to read the Mail against his or her will.

I can’t believe all the commenters who actually think that it wasn’t a big deal. This world is full of bigotry and hatred and these estate agents were intentionally adding to that. This was not done lightheartedly, but with malice. Maybe the commenters would like to have their addresses printed along with choice one word descriptors of them? The first one that springs to mind is “bigot”.

And Beeper isn’t alone. Hats off to Lucy:

We have no idea how this came to be in the paper – it is entirely possible that the press picked the story up from the courts or from the estate agents rather than that the women went to them. It may not be ‘discrimination’ as such but it was certainly no accident – you can’t accidentally insert the word ‘lesbian’ where a reference number should be. So clearly someone at the estate agents thought it would be funny to invade the privacy of two people who had hired them to provide a professional service, and found their sexuality to be a huge joke. The women made a private complaint first which was dismissed out of hand – as with so many situations, had the firm had the decency to offer a sincere apology that would probably have been an end to it. Good for the women for demanding to be treated with courtesy and respect.