Media Matters for America’s latest post reveals that Breitbart.com criticized a Pennsylvania couple that was refused wedding gowns by a bridal shop owner on religious grounds, assailing the “lesbian bridezillas” for writing about their experience on Facebook.
Aug. 7, The Press Enterprise reported that an unidentified lesbian couple in Bloomsburg, PA had been refused service by W. W. Bridal Boutique owner Victoria Miller. “We feel to answer to God for what we do,” Miller told The Press Enterprise. “And providing those two girls dresses for a sanctified marriage would break God’s law.” The couple subsequently posted about Miller’s refusal to serve them on Facebook, prompting criticisms of W. W. Bridal’s discriminatory policy.
In an August 12 article titled “Lesbian Bridezillas Bully Bridal Shop Owner Over Religious Beliefs,” Breitbart attacked “the lesbians” for “bull[ying]” Miller, citing the anti-gay hate group the Family Research Council (FRC) to condemn their fight for equal treatment as “forced acceptance”:
A Pennsylvania Christian bridal shop owner who refused to provide wedding gowns to a lesbian couple because of her religious beliefs was bullied by the lesbians on Facebook, where their post about the shop owner’s refusal to serve them went viral.
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According to the News, the Bloomsburg Town Council is meeting Monday night to discuss the incident and whether to propose legislation that will ban businesses from refusing to serve LGBT customers, potentially providing the couple the means with which to sue Miller.
[…]
“Instead of showing the tolerance their movement claims to practice, the women turned to social media to bully the shop – trashing its online reviews and sparking a city-wide firestorm,” said Family Research Council (FRC). “Obviously W.W. Bridal Boutique isn’t the only wedding dress shop in town. These women could have easily taken their business elsewhere – but chose to retaliate instead.”
Referring to the leftist gay activist agenda as “forced acceptance,” FRC said, “When religious liberty clashes with homosexuality – as it has from bakeries to flower shops – the storylines are all the same: conform or be punished.”
Breitbart also cited disputed statistics showing that gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals may constitute less than three percent of the population – presumably to advance the bizarre conservative argument that minority groups don’t deserve legal protections because they’re too much of a minority.
As Philadelphia Weekly has noted, Miller’s discrimination against the lesbian couple was actually legal. Unlike every other state with marriage equality, Pennsylvania has no anti-discrimination law on the books protecting its LGBT citizens, leaving the couple little legal recourse.
So it’s especially ironic that Breitbart would attack them for taking to social media to raise awareness of W. W. Bridal’s discriminatory practices. In arguing against non-discrimination protections, conservatives – including Breitbart editor-at-large Ben Shapiro – regularly assert that the free market will check against discrimination on its own. But now that the free market appears to be punishing a business for anti-gay bigotry, the right wing is crying foul.
