On a July 9 visit to Dollywood and Dollywood's Splash Country with her wife and a friend's children, Odom wore a shirt that read "Marriage is So Gay." Odom told us, "When we got to Dollywood Splash Country, the man at the entry gate whispered in my ear that I needed to turn my shirt inside out." Dollywood has a dress-code policy where clothing that is deemed offensive is either covered up or turned inside out.
Owens confirms this in an interview with The Advocate, a gay and lesbian news magazine."Thousands of times a day our front gate hosts are asked to enforce our dress code policy," he said. "It doesn't have anything to do with who the people are or what their belief system is or with anything other than the fact that we try to prevent as best as we can upon entry of the park one of our guests being offended by something someone else is wearing."
In an interview with an NBC affiliate Odom said, "I was curious what he found offensive about the shirt. If it was the fact that it had the word gay on it or that it was in conjunction with the word marriage." Odom sent a letter to Dollywood on the 19th to file her complaint.
"I do not feel that your company has the right to restrict the freedom of speech of its patrons," she wrote in her letter. "My shirt was a political statement of equality."
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