February 3, 2012 5:32 AM

Yeah, it's SO much more fun being the oppressor than the oppressed, eh?

MY NEW HERO

Martha Boggs

A restaurant in Knoxville, Tennessee refused to serve state Sen. Stacey Campfield, the man who sponsored the state’s “don’t say gay” bill, compared homosexuality to bestiality, and most recently told Michelangelo Signorile that it’s virtually impossible to spread HIV/AIDS through heterosexual sex. “I hope that Stacy Campfield now knows what if feels like to be unfairly discriminated against,” the Bistro at the Bijou wrote on its Facebook wall on Sunday. The restaurant has received an overwhelmingly positive response.

I’m not normally a person who believes that two wrongs make a right, but in this case one right certainly slaps down a far more egregious wrong. I’ve often struggled with how to appropriately respond to people who’d rather hate and divide than love and unite. I don’t want to sink to their level, but neither do I want to let bigotry go unchallenged. It would seem that Martha Boggs and the staff at the Bistro at the Bijou restaurant has drawn a line in the sand I can respect.

I put myself through my last year of college waiting tables. Half the staff in the restaurant was gay. No one cared. We were just a group of people thrown together for a myriad of reasons, and all we cared about was that we had a job to do. When someone disrespected one of my coworkers, though, we all reacted as one. If someone hassled any of my gay colleagues, we all stood up for them. In many cases, a restaurant staff resembles a large, occasionally dysfunctional family. We looked out for one another, and we had each other’s backs. There were conflicts and egos didn’t always mesh, but everyone had to pull together if things were going to work…and we generally did.

When I read about the staff at the Bistro at the Bijou refusing to serve Tennessee state Sen. Stacey Campfield, I couldn’t help but smile. Campfield has made a name for himself by spreading lies, propaganda, and disinformation about the LGBT community, so I found it refreshing that someone turned the tables on him.

Not so much fun being on the receiving end, is it?

Campfield was upset that the restaurant’s hostess called him homophobic. I imagine that it must have been quite shocking to Campfield that someone would call him on his homophobia. He’s so convinced of the righteousness of his cause that I doubt he ever considered his prejudice to be anything but the correct and godly thing to do.

Boggs, the owner of the Bistro at the Bijou in Knoxville, asked Campfield to leave, and if I happened to live in Knoxville, which I don’t, I’d patronize her restaurant every single day.

Following the incident, Boggs posted a status on her restaurant’s Facebook page which read, “I hope that Stacy (sic) Campfield now knows what it feels like to be unfairly discriminated against.”

Metropulse reports that Boggs later clarified her actions in an interview. “I didn’t want his hate in my restaurant,” she said. “I told him he wasn’t welcome here. … I feel like he’s gone from being stupid to being dangerous, and I wanted to stand up to him.”….

Boggs’ actions come on the heels of an interview Campfield gave last week to Signorile, in which the senator made controversial statements on the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the media’s supposed “glorification” of homosexuals.

“Most people realize that AIDS came from the homosexual community — it was one guy screwing a monkey, if I recall correctly, and then having sex with men. It was an airline pilot, if I recall,” he said in the interview. “My understanding is that it is virtually — not completely, but virtually — impossible to contract AIDS through heterosexual sex…very rarely [transmitted].”

You can listen to that interview here.

Some folks were upset that Campfield was singled out simply for speaking his mind, and I can understand, if not necessarily agree with, their point of view. Then again, most any business has the right to refuse service. All Boggs was doing was exercising that right.

Look at it this way: If someone insulted your friends and family, would you invite them to a party you were hosting? I daresay you’d show that person the door, and you’d have every right to do so.

The constitution guarantees free speech, and no one is denying Campfield’s right to speak his mind. And if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times; free speech can be, and very often is, offensive speech. What Campfield discovered is that free and offensive speech can have consequences…and that’s what makes Boggs and her staff at the Bijou at the Bayou heroes. They stood up to a bully and told him he wasn’t welcome. Would that more good and decent people would do the same. Now there’s a movement afoot to refuse service to Campfield in Knoxville businesses. Hate should be ostracized; what began as a good idea now appears to be a movement.

And it couldn’t happen to a nicer homophobic bigot.

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on February 3, 2012 5:32 AM.

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