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Food

The Abbey Announces A Ban On Anti-Gay Politicians

abbey-weho.jpg
The Abbey (Photo by Ed and Eddie via the Creative Commons on Flickr)

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West Hollywood's The Abbey has a message to politicians sponsoring anti-gay legislation: we don't serve your kind.

The legendary gay bar sent out a notice of its new policy inspired by a recent wave of anti-gay legislation. David Cooley, founder of the Abbey, said in a release, "I want to send a message to all those people out there who conflate Christian values with discrimination: we don't want your kind here."

Here are the details:

Effective immediately, every legislator in any state that votes for bills to allow for discrimination against LGBT people will be added to the “Deny Entry List” at The Abbey. The Abbey will also have headshots of each state representative who support such bills on the security list. Bills that would legalize discrimination of gays have already been introduced with Kansas House Bill 2453, Arizona Senate Bill 1062, Idaho House Bill 426, Ohio House Bill 82 along with other similar proposals in Tennessee, Utah, South Dakota, and Oregon.

This ban seems largely symbolic—not because it would be totally out of character for an an anti-gay politicians to hit up a gay bar on the sly (it happens!)—but because most of the legislators are pretty far out of the way. But The Abbey calls on other "businesses that appreciate their LGBT customers" to do the same thing. The Abbey also banned the heterosexual traditional known as a bachelorette party when gay marriage was still illegal in California.

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