Why, Yes, I Do Live In The Bible Belt

Over the past few days, here in the River Valley, we've had another one of those fine events that reminds us just how time-anchored this bit of the country really is.

Specifically, one of our QUILTBAG groups, the River Valley Equality Center, scheduled an benefit at a local restaurant, Sisters Gourmet Bistro: music, other entertainment.  Tickets were sold, commitments were made.  When the owner discovered that the E in Equality meant equality for those gays, he cancelled.  Confronted, he told the event organizer that he would have cancelled a if they had been the KKK too -- that he didn't want controversy connected to his establishment.

Yep.  Because fighting for equality through peaceful means and fighting against equality via violence and terrorism -- those are exactly the same things, so I see your point.

One especially stinging issue is that this particular restaurant, Sisters Gourmet Bistro, is one that we on the liberal side here in Arkansas had seen as an ally of sorts, a more liberal sort of place, as it were.  As my ex-student Dustin explains here in his post on the subject, many people were involved in working to help Sisters get their liquor license (no small thing in that rabidly Conservative and therefore dry county).  And as many people have remarked on Sisters' page over the past few days, the bistro has been pleased to take gay money over the years.

But letting it been seen by the community at large that Sisters doesn't spit on that sort of people?

Well, apparently that is just too much to ask.