A North Carolina bar is facing national backlash after the owner asked a gay couple to leave.
Andrew Deras and Justin Baker were forced to leave Louie’s Sports Pub in Fayetteville last week after owner Pam Griffin asked the couple to stop kissing. Deras and Baker apparently shared a short kiss when Griffin approached them to complain.
“He put his arm around me, he gave me a kiss, and she said this wasn’t right, this wasn’t OK,” Deras told WRAL. “She threatened both of us. He gave me a kiss. It was very minor. It was just a peck. It was two seconds.”
Griffin approached the men with a security guard after receiving complaints from customers, “eight or nine” according to The Fayetteville Observer. “They came to me and said, ‘Pam, you got a problem out here and it’s going to get ugly.'”
According to Griffin, customers were complaining over the couple’s affection towards one another. “I walked up to them calmly. I asked them guys, you know, can you kind of just separate, kind of move apart?” she said. She told the pair that she didn’t care if they remained in the bar, but asked them to “just calm down because you’re making people feel uncomfortable.”
Both sides disagree on what happened next. Griffin maintains that the men cursed at her and started to aggressively kiss one another. Deras and Baker claim that they laughed at her request and shared another kiss.
“I just gave Andrew a kiss, and that’s when she started getting really crazy,” said Baker. “She’s saying, ‘This is enough. This is enough,’ like basically telling us to get out.”
The bar’s Facebook page has since been inundated with comments from gay people angry with Griffin’s treatment of the couple. Griffin stated that someone called and threatened to burn the bar down, while she’s also received death threats.
“I tried to be as nice as I could. This is a straight bar. I don’t mind who comes in – white, black, mixed, Chinese,” she said. “Everybody’s welcome. But you have to respect the kind of place you’re in.”
William Saki is celebrating his new “GAY” license plate after suing Ohio's Bureau of Motor Vehicles for initially rejecting his request. Saki, who lives in the LGBTQ-friendly Cleveland suburb of Lakewood, argued the plate simply reflected his identity as a gay man and should be protected as free speech.
When Saki previously entered “GAY” into the BMV’s online registration tool, it rejected the request as “Inappropriate/Invalid.” The term had been on a list of nearly 62,000 prohibited plate words since 1996.
Among those terms: "QUEER", "HOMO," and even "LESBIAN."
Lucien Bates, a transgender man, says security guards threatened to arrest him after he used the women’s restroom at a Round1 arcade inside the North Riverside Park Mall in suburban Chicago. Bates, an Indiana resident, was visiting the venue on September 28 with his fiancé and a friend to play Dance Dance Revolution.
Bates, who presents as alt-masculine with facial hair and piercings, had just arrived at the arcade when he needed to use the restroom. He chose the women’s restroom, a decision he often makes in public because he feels safer there and is less likely to be harassed.
The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that cisgender students may repeatedly and intentionally misgender transgender classmates, invalidating an Ohio school district's policies that sought to stop the practice.
In a 10-7 decision, the court found that Olentangy Local School District's prohibition on using "gendered language they know is contrary to the other student's identity," including pronouns and honorifics, infringes on the rights of students who believe there are only two genders.
The challenged policies include an anti-harassment rule prohibiting "discriminatory harassment" or bullying based on gender identity and other protected traits that "places a student or school employee in reasonable fear of harm," interferes with education or work, or disrupts school operations, according to The Associated Press.
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