If you are a glutton for punishment, you may have logged on to Twitter recently and noticed that “No Gays Allowed” was trending. The irrational left already had their outrage prepped and ready to go, so they immediately latched on to this new trending story about Christian “bigots” attempting to discriminate against homosexuals in Tennessee.
Sorry to break it to you all, but that story is from 2015. It will be three years old on July 1. My initial reaction was to ask if anybody was actually looking into the facts of the case…then I realized that in the age of feelings over facts, nobody is reading past the headlines anymore, let alone looking into the actual details of the news story.
Homophobic No Gays Allowed sign put up by homophobic Tennessse store to show devotion to noted non-homophobe Jesus.
— John Fugelsang (@JohnFugelsang) June 7, 2018
The predictable reaction is to blame the Supreme Court’s decision regarding the Masterpiece Cakeshop for “emboldening” people to openly discriminate against the LGBT community. However, the story making the rounds is a USA Today article from July 1, 2015.
Everyone sharing that "no gays allowed" story knows it's from 2015, right? Or nah?
— David French (@DavidAFrench) June 7, 2018
The story is supposedly “fresh” again, as the hardware store has the sign hanging on their door again. It is important to note that the hardware store had replaced the original inflammatory sign with another one that said “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone who would violate our rights of freedom of speech & freedom of religion.” This is the sign that is hanging on the front door once again.
The important thing to remember is that one look at the hardware store’s website reveals that the owner is part of what one might classify as the “lunatic fringe” of Christianity. However, the narrative we are being fed is one that only wants to claim that Christians all over the country are going to wage open war on homosexuals. It simply isn’t true. An old story is being pushed to pretend that a fresh wave of discrimination is cresting after a SCOTUS decision that did absolutely nothing to change how or why owners of businesses can deny service or practice their freedom of speech. The Masterpiece Cakeshop decision merely stated that states could not discriminate on the application of the law based on an individual’s religious beliefs; now that the narrative that the SCOTUS had authorized discrimination was exposed as patently false, the hysterical left have shifted their tactics to utilize social media bots to amplify a story that they can twist to fit their narrative.
Furthermore, it isn’t just lack of context that is being utilized to get a non-story trending. Amee Vanderpool, a self-professed lawyer and feminist, tweeted two pictures of both signs that had hung on the store back in 2015 with the caption: “The fallout from SCOTUS failing to settle the issue of the right to discriminate on the basis of religious freedom from Masterpiece Cake continues as the ‘No Gays Allowed’ sign is replaced with a ‘right to refuse service based on freedom of speech and religion’ sign.” This means that Vanderpool had to do enough research to grab pictures of the signs, which means she would have been exposed to the timelines and actual story. Yet, she still went forward with tweeting a blatant lie to her 134k followers. Apparently, this is just par for the course. We need to embrace the First Lady’s words of “Be Best.” When you see something trending online (or being shared by the MSM), take the time to verify before you go reactionary. Hysteria is a tool of those with weak positions and morals.
