At the current pace of donations, the owners of a small pizza parlor in Indiana who stated they wouldn’t cater same-sex functions will be millionaires by Easter. A fundraising page set up by a conservative news website on Wednesday has already raised more than $725,000 for Memories Pizza in the small town of Walkerton — home to little over 2,000 people. Lawrence Billy Jones of The Blaze created the fundraising page on Go Fund Me after co-owner Crystal O’Connor told Blaze TV host Dana Loesch that they had temporarily closed the business because of a furious backlash…. “The intent was to help the family stave off the burdensome cost of having the media parked out front, activists tearing them down, and no customers coming in,” Jones explains on the fundraising page. “Our goal was simply to help take one thing off this family’s plate as the strangers sought to destroy them. But other strangers came to the rescue and the total just keeps going up.”
In news that makes me want to play Russian Roulette with five full chambers, a pizza parlor in Walkerton, IN, is getting rich off homophobia.
Only in America could a self-righteous homophobe claim to be the real victim and have people them with cash….
People really suck sometimes, knowhutimean? This is one of those times that make me ashamed to call myself an American. By the time you’re reading this, there’s a very good chance that the owners of Memories Pizza will be millionaires despite not having accomplished anything of value…not that value is uniformly rewarded in American these days.
What I find truly astonishing is that Chrystal O’Connor, who’s become a spokesperson for the restaurant is falling back on the time-dishonored “discrimination and bigotry isn’t hatred when we do it, because we do it out of love” argument.
Because nothing says “Christian love” like refusing to provide services to a fellow human being because you find their liftestyle and sexuality abhorrent.
It’s What Jesus Would Do.
Memories Pizza GoFundMe Campaign Collects $842,387 For Indiana Couple Opposed To Gay Marriage http://t.co/mxulE3kRLv pic.twitter.com/I9J3OpUKHl
— Crooks and Liars (@crooksandliars) April 4, 2015
It is not a sin that we bring gays into our establishment and just serve them. It is a sin, though, if we cater their wedding. We feel we are participating. We’re putting a stamp of approval on their wedding. And we cannot do that,” O’Connor responded. “It’s not at all hateful. We show no hatred toward them.”
I find it interesting that O’Connor can with a straight face say that refusing to provide service to them because of their sexuality is “not at all hateful.” And that their supporters are focused on the rights of the restaurant’s owners but no one seems to care about the rights of those they’d refuse. Because it’s all about their “religious beliefs,” none of which have a thing to do with any aspect of Jesus’ teaching.
They talk about sin as if they have any right at all to judge others…and I seem to recall something from my Sunday School days about that very thing. They neglect to acknowledge that Jesus was about love and inclusion, not hatred and exclusion, that rejecting others and treating them as “less than” has nothing at all to do with His teachings. The O’Connors are simply common, everyday homophobes who believe that they’re superior moral beings…even though they have nothing to back them except their fear and prejudice.
The worst part of this sorry saga is that the O’Connors are as much Christians as Sarah Palin is about deep thoughts…and they’re about to become millionaires for it. Too many are willing to throw money at the O’Connors and reward their bigotry, homophobia, and commitment to their Christian faith. It’s just too bad that their prejudice and focus on their own rights has nothing to do with the Christianity they claim as their own. They condemn the “sin” of being true to oneself, but they fail to recognize their own sin in refusing to treat other human beings as equals because of who they are.
That’s some serious cafeteria Christianity.
