The Bistro at the Bijou

I am going to break with my Asian Homosexuality posts for a quick post tonight.  As I was getting ready for bed tonight, I was checking my email and came across a post by LargeTony at his new blog The Third Leg.  I will give you a short excerpt from the post, you can read the whole thing by using the link in this post.

Regular readers might remember me talking, back last summer, about a Tennessee state senator named Stacey Campfield from down in Knoxville. You know, the never-married late 30′s/early 40′s state senator, who is sponsoring a “Don’t Say Gay Bill.”
Well, it turns out that over the weekend he was refused service by the owner of a Knoxville restaurant because of his recent ignorant comments that HIV originated from “gay men having sex with monkeys” and that it is “virtually impossible” to become infected through hetero sex.

 I went to the link and read the story from Tony's post, and that led me to reading the comments people left.  Now, I think as long as someone does not refuse service for race, religion, or sex, then every owner by law has the right to refuse service to anyone.  Martha Boggs, the owner of The Bistro at the Bijou and refused service to the state senator, is, in my opinion, perfectly within her rights to do so.  I probably would have done the same thing.  I do not tolerate fools or bigots lightly, you could as any of my students about that.  As I was reading the comments which range from full support for Mrs. Boggs to slanderous slop, I have to share one comment that I read that goes to a whole new level of misunderstanding that I just couldn't leave alone, and since there were already over 500 comments on the article I decided to blog about it instead of posting a comment of my own.  Here is the remark that really bothered me:

Number69 writes:

in response to Tea_Time:
Leave it to ignorant southerner to revamp..."we reserve the right to refuse service" slogan straight out of the 1960's...
If the food isn't that great to spur business...try controversy!!

This lady (owner) must be to young to remember when a group of black kids sat at a counter in downtown Kvle and the police came in and made them leave. It all goes back to the fact that there is no link to the civil rights movement and homosexuals. Sorry gay kids, but you never marched with dogs on you, fire houses nocking you down and waves of crazy white crackers blowing up your churches. Truth be told the NAACP should picket the heck out of the bistro first thing tomorrow. NAACP won the RIGHT for folks to eat where they want and they should defend that right. Bistro is not a bad place to eat for lunch..after 5 the drunk lawyers get a bit on the loud side and it is certainly no place for a family to take their child.

 I have put in bold what I find most problematic for me in this comment (I find the whole comment to be problematic, but this really bothered me).  For the commenter, who I doubt will ever read this, gay people did march with dogs on them, because they marched beside African Americans during the Civil Rights Movement.  For the same reason, they had fire hoses knocking them down.  Gay people may not have had churches blown up, but we were thrown out of churches.  Furthermore, we were burned at the stake, put to death in numerous different ways, imprisoned, and tortured for our homosexuality.  There is most definitely a link between the Civil Rights Movement and homosexuals, just as there is a link with all movements for equality.  Gays have been persecuted throughout history.  We are still persecuted today.  Bigots like Campfield , bigots like Santorum, bigots like all the people who condemn us for who we are.  I find great sadness in bigotry.  I merely wish that all people could follow the example of the Golden Rule and treat others as they want to be treated.  Maybe Mrs. Boggs did not do this, but if I were an ignorant bigot, I would hope that someone would tell me.

Tennessee is not alone with the problems of having bigoted politicians.  We have them in Alabama too.  Former Chief Justice Roy Moore is running for Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice again (after he had been removed from office for violating a federal court order.)  Moore is the so-called "Ten Commandments Judge" who snuck a (tacky and ludicrous) marble monument of the Ten Commandments into the Alabama Judicial Building in the middle of the night.  When he was ordered to remove it, and it should have been removed for its tackiness alone, he refused and was forced out of office.  Moore is the same judge who wrote the Alabama Supreme Court opinion that took custody from a lesbian mother, simply because she was lesbian, and gave custody to the abusive father.  Okay, I have bitched about Moore enough, but it does piss me off every time I see one of his campaign signs.

I got a little off topic there, sorry.  It is after midnight and time for me to go to bed.

Back to our regularly scheduled program in the morning...