Richmond Restaurant Denies Pro-Family Group Dinner Service

The intolerant leftist mob is coming for Christians everywhere, and we were just the latest target in the way this past Wednesday night.

The Family Foundation of Virginia is the largest and oldest pro-family advocacy organization in Virginia. Our team and supporters were denied a meal for our beliefs when Metzger’s Bar and Butchery in Richmond, Virginia, refused to service our pre-reserved event, leaving us scrambling just moments before.

For weeks, we had planned a gathering in a private room to fellowship and update supporters on our work. About an hour and a half before the event was set to take place, one of the restaurant’s owners called our team to cancel. An employee had looked up our organization, and their wait staff refused to serve us.

Their official explanation was that our pro-life and pro-traditional-marriage positions violated the “basic human rights” of women and LGBT individuals. What human right is more basic than the right to life? What family structure is more foundational than marriage between a man and a woman, the bedrock of Western civilization for thousands of years? Lest we forget, it wasn’t so long ago that, when running for president, Barack Obama declared that “marriage is between a man and a woman.”

This is the gospel of woke — the new intolerant religion controlling the left. Anyone who refuses to bow before their altar must be subdued, discriminated against, and punished. It’s a godless religion without mercy and without hope.

Welcome to the 2020s, where people who consider themselves to be progressives, claim to preach “tolerance” while demanding forced “acceptance” and “celebration.” True tolerance includes a tacit admission that there is something about a person or a group with which you disagree, but that you tolerate for the sake of co-existing peacefully in a civil society.

Welcome to the double standard of the left, where Jack Phillips must be forced to create a wedding cake as part of the celebration of a same-sex ceremony, to take an action that violates his beliefs, but any business should be able to deny a basic meal to a paying customer who holds traditional views about marriage. The double standard is sickening and reeks of this intolerant, unyielding doctrine wokeness preaches.

At The Family Foundation, we believe individuals in private business should not have to violate their convictions, which for some, means not celebrating what God has declared sin. However, most, if not all, faiths not only allow for the provision of services, such as food, to those whom they tolerate, but they also encourage it.

Conservatives and people of faith need to expect to be cut off from services in the current cancel culture environment. They best know they will pay more for goods and services and their options will be fewer. While many may not experience discrimination yet, we recognize we are on the tip of the spear. Watching these situations across the nation and in our own sphere helped initiate the purchase of our own building, forecasting a day when we would no longer be a welcomed tenant by intolerant left corporate building owners.

The left hates us because we espouse Christian values which they seek to snuff out and destroy. This brazen act of discrimination was a shot across the bow at Christians everywhere, and it’s just the beginning.

Already, our database provider was purchased by a larger company called Every Action, which immediately informed us we were being discontinued as a client. That forced shift cost us tens of thousands of dollars, as it is not as easy as pivoting to another restaurant to hold an event. Most Americans are not interested in a marketplace that divides along political or religious lines.

Not even 24 hours before our event was canceled, the U.S. Senate passed the wrongfully named “Respect for Marriage Act” with the help of 12 Republicans who assured the public that, even with this federal codification of same-sex marriage, the language in the act asserting that beliefs on marriage between a man and a woman are “based on decent and honorable religious or philosophical premises” and those that hold such beliefs “are due proper respect” would preserve, not diminish, religious liberty. Less than a day later and before the legislation is even signed into law, we already see how worthless that empty rhetoric is.

While the left aims to silence those with traditional viewpoints, we will not be silenced. We will speak out when we see viewpoint discrimination occurring in Virginia. And we encourage all Americans who value freedom of thought and expression to stand up and speak up in their communities.

We are hopeful others will join us in this fight, but we will keep fighting even if we stand alone.


Victoria Cobb is president of The Family Foundation of Virginia.

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