Indiana pizzeria nets $842,000
An online fundraiser is held for the business that said it would refuse to cater a same-sex wedding.
The fundraiser for owners of an Indiana pizzeria that became the target of widespread animosity after they said they wouldn’t cater a same-sex wedding reception has come to an end after collecting more than $842,000.
A Go Fund Me page started by a producer from conservative news network the Blaze, founded by Glenn Beck, had drawn more than 29,000 donors as of Saturday. The website allows donations to be made anonymously.
“The intent was to help the family stave off the burdensome cost of having the media parked out front, activists tearing them down, and no customers coming in,” wrote Lawrence Jones, a producer who works for Blaze personality Dana Loesch. “But other strangers came to the rescue and the total just keeps going up.”
Memories Pizza landed in the center of a national debate over Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act on Tuesday, when Crystal O’Connor told a local television reporter her family would refuse requests to cater same-sex wedding receptions because it conflicted with their faith.
The comments quickly gained national attention, as activists said the Walkerton pizzeria highlighted concerns that Indiana’s legislation allowed blanket protections for businesses that engaged in discriminatory practices.
Crystal’s father, Kevin O’Connor, said Wednesday that he has no problem with same-sex couples, and had not sought to make a declaration that he wouldn’t serve them. His daughter was simply responding to a television reporter’s question, O’Connor said.
“We service anyone,” he said. “I don’t care who it is. I don’t care if they’re covered with tattoos, I don’t care if they got rings in their ears. I don’t care if they’re gay. The only thing I said was I cannot condone gay marriage.”
The backlash against religious freedom laws has affected other business owners as well. A baker in Longwood, Fla., received threats and hateful phone calls on Thursday after she said she wouldn’t design a cake with an antigay message.
“I thought it was a prank call,” Sharon Haller said Saturday.
It wasn’t a joke. The next day, she was still being threatened. The caller, Arizona evangelist Joshua Feuerstein, posted a video of the initial conversation online, Haller said.
In the video, Feuerstein calls the bakery and says he needs a sheet cake that reads “We do not support gay marriage.”
After a few seconds of silence, Haller asks, “Is this a crank call?” When Feuerstein explains that he isn’t joking, Haller tells him the bakery won’t make that type of cake and hangs up.
“There’s all of this hoopla going around because Christian bakeries think that they shouldn’t be forced?” Feuerstein said in the nearly fourminute video. “We’re getting to the place in America now to where Christians aren’t allowed any freedom of speech.”
The video has been removed from Feuerstein’s Facebook page, but the bakery reposted it on YouTube. Cut The Cake now has a Go Fund Me of its own, which had raised more than $5,000 as of Saturday afternoon.
The law at the center of the debate has since been revised. Under mounting national outrage and pressure from corporations that do business in Indiana, specifically the NCAA, Republican Gov. Mike Pence signed an amendment that offers some protections from discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, also a Republican, signed a similarly revised measure on Thursday, after his state Legislature passed a bill that mirrored Indiana’s.
‘We service anyone. I don’t care who it is.... I don’t care if they’re gay. The only thing I said was I cannot condone gay marriage.’
— Kevin O’Connor,
Memories Pizza