Curt Flewelling, FISM News
A firestorm of controversy has erupted as a Virginia restaurant abruptly canceled dinner reservations for a Christian conservative organization citing that the group’s presence would have made their employees feel uncomfortable and unsafe.
Metzger’s Bar and Butchery in Richmond, Virginia abruptly canceled the dinner reservations of the Family Foundation just 90 minutes before the group was set to dine.
The restaurant’s public statement on the issue reads, “We have always refused service to anyone for making our staff uncomfortable or unsafe, and this was the driving force behind our decision.”
Family Foundation of Virginia President Victoria Cobb asked the Washington Examiner, “Are they planning to ask all customers what they believe and where they send their donations before allowing them to enter?”
Some may see it as quite ironic that a food service establishment justifies such discrimination on the grounds of being sensitive to their staff’s dignity and rights while being intolerant of their customers’ religious rights.
Individuals sympathetic to LGBTQ concerns demanded that the Masterpiece Cake Shop in Lakewood, Colorado bake a cake for a gay couple who wanted to celebrate their wedding. The controversy led to the case Masterpiece Cakeshop Ltd. v Colorado Civil Rights Commission. In the 2018 decision, the Supreme Court of the United States in a 7-2 ruling declared that the actions of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission in assessing a cakeshop owner’s reasons for declining to make a cake for a same-sex couple violated the free exercise clause of the First Amendment.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch commenting on the case said, “Forcing the baker to make a cake would be impermissible compelled speech.”
FISM News has reported that a similar case is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court. In 303 Creative LLC v. Aubrey Elenis, a Christian wedding website designer is defending her right to refuse to create sites for same-sex couples.
Rather than compelling Metzger’s Bar and Butchery to serve them, however, the Family Foundation simply ate somewhere else that night.