el coyote community meeting

What a strange, and sad story, on so many levels.

A brief re-cap: El Coyote is a restaurant that has been in Los Angeles for years (decades really), and has, over the years, become a favorite of gay and lesbian clientele. The staff is predominately gay, although the ownership is not, nor was it intended to be. But, over the years, the ownership and the clientele have grown to have a good relationship.

Enter Proposition 8, when the owners niece, who works at El Coyote, donated $100 to the Yes on 8 campaign (effectively subsidizing the campaign to strip the clientele of their rights).

A boycott of the restaurant was in the works when the waitress decided to address the clientele. That is where this video is from--her address to them.

So where does this leave us? Can someone say simultaneously that she "loves" you and "cares" for you, but is willing not only to strip you of your rights, but to PAY to strip you of your rights? Where does one's culpability for ones votes or donations end? Is it at your own home, or at your place of work? There is nothing illegal about a boycott. There is nothing illegal about donating to a political cause. It is sad that, in this case, the two converge on the life of this one woman--but at the same time, the question must be asked if her pain in losing her job (or, at least, possibly losing her job,) is even equal to the pain caused to the LGBT community by the Prop 8 vote she is responsible for.

Her logic that she's been a member of her Church (Mormon) for a lifetime as reasoning for simultaneously "loving" gays and lesbians but voting to strip the of their rights rings hollow, however, when we look across the pond. In Finland, the Evangelical Lutheran Church has seen upwards of 20,000 members resign out of protest when a Church Spokeswoman said the following:

But, marriage and the right to adopt children are things between a man and a women, and that is the way it is

Imagine, if you would, if the Mormon Church, after hearing the NUMEROUS (and continuous) denunciations of gays in far worse terms than this, saw a similar exodus from its ranks by those who "love" and "support" gays and lesbians. Imagine how different the atmosphere at El Coyote restaurant would have been in that case--no sadness on behalf of a woman who threw her support behind those she loves and supports followed by mutual admiration for the restaurant and staff which supported them.

Instead, we see this woman, at the unfortunate intersection of a personal faith that she will not allow to be overridden by love of her fellow men, becoming a lightning rod for a community that is assailed as evil, unworthy of basic rights and persecuted. And there, at that restaurant, these forces converge to destroy what was a safe place for the community and turning it into a symbol of something destructive.