A local restaurant in Virginia canceled a private event of a Christian group that holds anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-abortion views for the safety of its staff.
In an Instagram post on December 1, the Metzger Bar and Butchery in Richmond, Virginia, announced that it had canceled a private event.
According to the reports, the restaurant refused to serve the group associated with the Family Foundation. This Virginia-based conservative Christian organization is exceptionally vocal about its scorn towards same-sex marriages, abortion rights, and nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people.
"In eight years of service, we have very rarely refused service to anyone who wished to dine with us," the statement says. "Recently, we refused service to a group that had booked an event with us after the owners of Metzger found out it was a group of donors to a political organization that seeks to deprive women and LGBTQ+ persons of their basic human rights."
This German-inspired restaurant, owned by celebrity chef Brittanny Anderson in Union Hill, expressed that it respects all the groups who "deserve dignity and a safe working environment," and wants its staff and patrons to be safe.
Brittanny Anderson, famous for her appearances in popular TV shows such as Top Chef and Chopped, has deleted her Twitter account and made her Instagram account private.
The private event by the Family Foundation was supposed to be on November 30. After the incident, the group blamed the eating establishment for denying them service because of their political beliefs in a blog post headlined, "We've been canceled again!"
Metzger Bar and Butchery in Richmond canceled the Family Foundation of Virginia's 20 person reservation, just an hour before the group's holiday party. President of @TFFVA, Victoria Cobb, tells us about the organization and why she thinks they perceived the group as a threat. pic.twitter.com/eXeHOaUaaB
— EWTN News Nightly (@EWTNNewsNightly) December 9, 2022
Family Foundation director Victoria Cobb made a comparison of the current situation with "an environment from the 1950s and early 60s" when people of color and minorities were denied services because of having different skin colors.
According to the University of Texas professor Elizabeth Sepper, these two different situations can never be compared. She said that discrimination against a group because of 'characteristics' that they cannot change is not the same as denying service to a group because of its actions they knowingly took. Sepper said, "It's about the overall positions and policies the group has taken – it's not about Christian vs. non-Christian."
Since the incident, the Yelp page of Metzger Bar and Butchery was frozen and showed an "unusual activity alert."
The alert says, "This business recently received increased public attention, which often means people come to this page to post their views on the news."
"While we don't take a stand one or the other when it comes to this incident, we've temporarily disabled the posting of content to this page."
