NEW YORK - A US landscaping firm has been inundated with hate mail after an email it sent rejecting a client because he was gay was made public.
Houston-based firm Garden Guy sent an email on October 18 turning down a prospective customer by saying: "I need totell you that we cannot meet with you because we choose not to work for homosexuals."
The recipient, Michael Lord, forwarded the email to dozens of friends and it spread across the internet.
Garden Guy's website makes no secret of the firm's outlook. "The God-ordained institution of marriage is under attack," it says at the bottom of a page offering patios and organic pest control, and asks browsers to go to www.nogaymarriage.com.
The forum on Garden Guy's website has received 26 pages of postings since the email was made public, many of them criticizing the owners' stance and urging a boycott. One accused the company of "hate and discrimination."
Garden Guy co-owner Sabrina Farber said her family had also received verbal attacks and murder threats.
"When we sent (the email) we intended it for the client. We did not intend it to be some sweeping political statement for the world. That's it," she said. "We are humbly sorry for the hurt that it caused. We meant no hate."
Farber said she had not anticipated the impact that the email would have. "We felt that it was our right as an American small business to choose who we do business with," she said in a telephone interview.
"Do I want to say that before you send an email you might think about the fact the whole world can see it? I guess I do," she added.
Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Electronic Privacy Information Centre, said those who send business emails should not normally be entitled to expect them to remain private.
He said exceptions that would stand up before communication privacy laws were communications between doctors and patients or lawyers and clients, where confidentiality was expected.
