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I coach for the city here where i live. Varying sports for ages 4-13 depending on where they need help coaching. For baseball this year one of my teams is a 4-5 year old t ball team. We had our first practice last night and two women came with a little girl. I introduced myself and said hi and they immediately went on a little speech about how they are together, they are lesbians, they are raising this girl together, nothing wrong with that. Then go into whats going to happen if I discriminate against their daughter because of their sexuality, threatening lawsuits and explaining that there are laws ect. I told them I was there to teach their daughter softball, and their sexual orientation was not a factor at all and moved along. As I am meeting other parents a few of them commented that this lady had approached them and gave them a similar speech out of nowhere. After all the kids were there I gathered the kids together and started off having the kids introduce themselves to their teammates. No additional information really, just kid would say my name is Earl. And everyone would say Hi Earl to start to learn teammates names. When the little girl told everyone her name, again the lady popped into action giving her speech to everyone out there. I stopped her after about a minute and spoke to her privately, or as privately as I could on a baseball field, and let her know that it is not appropriate to interrupt a team activity like that, and again told her noone is going to be discriminating against her daughter. So today I get a call from the city letting me know she filed a complaint and is taking her child off of my team because I told her she had to hide her sexuality at our practices so it wouldn't bother other parents. I dont recall my exact wording but it was not mean, the word hiding or even sexuality didnt come out of my mouth. I only asked her not to interrupt our practices and tried to assure he that I don't care what her sexual preference is, I am there to teach baseball and the other parents are only there to watch.
Was I wrong to ask her to stop what she was doing?
You were correct in asking her to stop and in fact I would have asked her to stop earlier than a minute and to talk to me about her "discrimination" worries another time and with witnesses when she first tried to bring it up. Bring along another parent to the meeting. Tell the city and her that you will record her in the future and if she does not like that then she should not speak to you as you are protecting yourself. Good luck and as a fellow coach I feel your pain. Some parents are just ****ing assholes.