A local restaurant in Washington has refused to cater a lesbian couple’s wedding based on religious beliefs. The same-gender couple spent over a month talking to a local restaurant on Instagram about catering their upcoming wedding in January.
Rayah Calkins and her fiancé Lillian Glover live in Centralia, WA, a small city near the midpoint between Seattle and Portland. The couple spent over a month talking to a local restaurant on Instagram about catering their upcoming wedding in January. Upon meeting face-to-face, the restaurant informed Calkins and Glover that they would no longer be able to do business with them.
“She kind of put her hands up to her face and said, ‘I’m really sorry; we’re not going to be able to cater your wedding,’” Rayah Calkins told local NBC affiliate KING-TV. “Telling you after they visually see you two together, that that’s not something they can move forward with was—It’s something you just can’t really comprehend in the moment.”
“(It was a) shock to me,” Calkins says. “We’ve never received, like, that blatant discrimination to our face.”
Jessica Britton, owner of JJ’s To Go, stands by her decision not to cater the couple’s upcoming same-gender wedding. She insisted that she does not discriminate against anyone, but that her decision not to cater and lesbian couple’s wedding follows her Christian values.
“We love them. Jesus loves them. They are human just like us,” Britton says. But, “the part of a wedding being a religious ceremony and a religious act between a man and a woman goes against my beliefs and my faith, and I cannot participate.”
The Christian restaurant owner has since claimed to receive continuous threats against her business and family as the story has spread in the news.
However, Calkins and Glover have only called for a boycott of the restaurant and peaceful protests. While they do plan to take legal action against the restaurant, the couples made it clear that they don’t want any threats to be made against the families or employees of JJ’s To Go. For now, they have found a new caterer in the area: Crowded Kitchen in Toldeo.
Back in 2013, the Washington State Supreme Court ruled that a florist who, citing religious beliefs, refused to provide flowers for a gay couple’s wedding broke the state’s anti-discrimination law. The florist’s lawyer appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which later upheld the lower court’s ruling.
Photo courtesy of a screenshot from KINGTV
