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The New Face of Christian Bigotry: Memories Pizza owner Crystal O'Connor is under attack after telling a TV reporter who asked that she would not cater a gay wedding. Note the caption on the ABC-57 report indicating that the pizza shop has already denied service to somebody. This is false.

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2015/04/01/st ... f-nothing/

The Left’s New Avatar of Christian Bigotry: Memories Pizza owner Crystal O’Connor, of Walkerton, Indiana.

The Huffington Post headline screams:
Indiana’s Memories Pizza Reportedly Becomes First
Business To Reject Catering Gay Weddings

Memories Pizza is a nine-year-old shop in downtown Walkerton, Indiana, just a few blocks from John Glenn High School. It’s owned by an openly-Christian couple, the O’Connors, who decorate their shop with mementos of their faith in Christ. So how does a small business in a small town wind up making headlines around the world as the new avatar of Christian bigotry?

Perhaps, you say, they brought this upon themselves, seeking out publicity for their strict biblical views.

Eh…no.

Some cursory internet forensics shows how it happened…or rather, how it was made to happen.

ABC-57 reporter Alyssa Marino’s editor sends her on a half-hour drive southwest of their South Bend studio, to the small town of Walkerton (Pop. ~2,300). According to Alyssa’s own account on Twitter, she “just walked into their shop [Memories Pizza] and asked how they feel” about Indiana’s new Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Owner Crystal O’Connor says she’s in favor of it, noting that while anyone can eat in her family restaurant, if the business were asked to cater a gay wedding, they would not do it. It conflicts with their biblical beliefs. Alyssa’s tweet mentions that the O’Connors have “never been asked to cater a same-sex wedding.”

What we have here is — as we called in journalism school jargon — “no story.” Nothing happened. Nothing was about to happen.

If I were forced to mark out a story line, it would be this: A nice lady in a small town tries to be helpful and polite to a lovely young reporter from “the big city.”

In other words, Memories Pizza didn’t blast out a news release. They didn’t contact the media, nor make a stink on Twitter or Facebook. They didn’t even post a sign in the window rejecting gay-wedding catering jobs. They merely answered questions from a novice reporter who strolled into their restaurant one day – who was sent on a mission by an irresponsible news organization.

Next: ABC-57 anchor Brian Dorman leads the evening newscast dramatically with this:

Only on ABC-57 News tonight. We went into small towns looking for reaction to the Religious Freedom Act. We found one business, just 20 miles away from a welcoming South Bend…with a very different view.

Alyssa Marino tweets how she got the Memories Pizza scoop

Alyssa Marino tweets the genesis
of the Memories Pizza scoop.



Notice that his city of South Bend is “welcoming,” but that small-town business is not. It’s very different. That’s why ABC-57 “went into small towns,” as if embarking on a safari to aboriginal lands.

Not only did ABC-57 News create that story ex nihilo (out of nothing), but the next day, the station’s Rosie Woods reported on the social-media backlash against the Christian pizza shop owners.

“Our Facebook page has been blowing up with comments after we aired that story last night,” said Woods.

At this point, even my old Leftist journalism professors would be grinding their teeth and rending their garments.

You see, not only did ABC-57 manufacture the story with an ambush interview, it then doubled-down by making the reaction to the story into another story to give the sense of momentum, as if it were growing at its own impetus. Yet, everything about it is a fabrication.

Memories Pizza didn’t “publicly vow to reject gay weddings” as HuffPo says it. The O’Connors were just, quite literally, minding their own business.

Back in the ABC-57 studio, Rosie Woods read three negative social media comments attacking the pizza shop owners, and then said, “And that’s just one side of this debate that’s heating up as more people and business owners speak up about the law.”

She then quotes one (1) person, the owner of another business, who agreed with the O’Connors. Seems that “just one side of this debate” deserves more attention than the other.
Buzzfeed's false headline about Memories Pizza

This false Buzzfeed headline has been seen hundreds of thousands of times.

The unnamed ABC-57 editor then sends another reporter door-to-door on Walkerton’s rather depressed-looking main drag, trying to get reactions from other business people about the pizza shop owners. And the story inexorably snowballs onward, with only man’s yearning for truth to propel it.

All of the blog traffic and social media activity led to about 36,000 Facebook shares at ABC57.com on the original Alyssa Marino story less than 24 hours after it aired.

BuzzFeed posted its own inaccurate headline, with the kicker: ”The Internet has unleashed its wrath.”

All of those eyeballs benefit the TV station, which sells advertising on its website. It also helps several young, minor-market reporters who hustled and stumbled their way into the national spotlight. But don’t blame them. Blame the editor.

Meanwhile, over at Yelp.com, more than a thousand “reviews” of Memories Pizza rapidly accumulated, quickly overwhelming the positive comments from actual customers who like the pizza, the hospitality and the small-town charm. Folks who never heard of Walkerton attacked Crystal O’Connor’s business, her morality and her Lord. Many of the remarks included racially charged descriptions of genitalia and sex acts. “Reviewers” also posted pictures of naked men, of Adolf Hitler shouting “Ich habe ein pizza” (I have a pizza), and of Jesus gesturing with his middle finger. Over on Facebook, the restaurant’s 5-star average rating rapidly plunged to one star, as non-customers slammed away at Crystal’s little business.

In Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, a manifesto of political power, Rule No. 12 says, in part:

Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)

The Left doesn’t care who gets hurt, so long as they get what they want. They’re willing — no, they’re eager — to sacrifice a small-town business, and it’s owners.

Lest you think I’m being too dramatic. Late Wednesday, word comes that Jess Dooley, a female coach at Concord High School 45 minutes away in Elkhart, has been suspended after tweeting:

Who’s going to Walkerton, IN to burn down #memoriespizza w me?

Big Gay Hate Machine Closes Christian Pizza Parlor
Indiana_law
Associated Press

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government ... za-parlor/

by Austin Ruse2 Apr 20150

A Christian-owned pizza parlor in Indiana has come under severe attack from all over the world for saying it would not cater a gay wedding.

Reporters have been all over the state of Indiana trying to find a vendor that would use the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to decline a gay wedding. They finally found one in a town with only 2,199 residents.

Memories Pizza is an explicitly Christian business, which is probably what drew reporters in the first place. The store is festooned with religious sayings including this:

Every day before we open the store, we gather and pray together. If there is something you would like us to pray for, just write it down and drop it in the box and we will pray for you.

When approached by a TV reporter, owner Crystal O’Connor said, “If a gay couple came in and wanted us to provide pizzas for their wedding, we would have to say no.”

Even though the station also reported: “The O’Connor family told ABC 57 news that if a gay couple or a couple belonging to another religion came in to the restaurant to eat, they would never deny them service,” what happened next is quite remarkable and demonstrates what some are calling the New Intolerance.

Ian Tuttle at National Review’s Corner blog discovered that Memories Pizza has come under attack on Google Maps of all places. A search for pizza parlors in the Walkerton shows Memories Pizza, but if you click on the image, gay propaganda pops up, and under reviews of the pizza parlor a few hundred of them, they are attacks on the tiny business.

One says, “This business believes in hate.”

Another says, “I commend you for your ‘we hate gays’ confession. It is not every day that that a business is willing to alienate 60% of their customer base who support gay marriage.”

Yet another says, “Memories Pizza owner are bigots.”

And another, “Bigoted owners=hateful employees=terrible service= plenty of other pizza places to choose from…ignore this place.”

Yelp is not any better. One guys writes, “My wife/cousin and I went hoping to see some vintage kkk memorabilia and check out their 3rd Reich themed menus but were disappointed to find that their hate is only directed at gays!”

Another simply said, “You suck. And you’re probably going to go under.”

A guy from Houston said, “I was totally going to get this place to cater my gay wedding, but since Crystal and her incestuous family don’t support the fact that I’ve chosen to have sex with men instead of the goats they breed with, it looks like I’m going to have to go with Dominoes.”

So intense were the threatening phone calls, emails, and Tweets, that the owner simply closed the shop, for now, until the liberal tolerance blows over.

Follow Austin Ruse on Twitter @austinruse

http://tinyurl.com/n55qxo3

The owners of Memories Pizza, a small pizza parlor in Walkerton, Ind., told ABC 57 that they’d use the law to refuse to cater a same-sex wedding. “That lifestyle is something they choose. I choose to be heterosexual,” Kevin O’Connor said. “They choose to be homosexual. Why should I be beat over the head to go along with something they choose?” (Memories Pizza has since announced they’re temporarily closed due to a barrage of angry Yelp reviews.)

Another man claiming to be a restaurant owner, who identified himself only as Ryan, told a local radio station that he supported the law because he already regularly discriminated against customers he perceived to be LGBT.

But the bill’s supporters vehemently insisted that it had nothing to do with discrimination. As reported by ThinkProgress, Andrew Walker, who heads policy studies at the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), argued that the bill really prevented discrimination—against religious business owners.

“A wedding vendor who chooses not to service a same-sex wedding is not discriminating against a person’s being,” he wrote. “To require a wedding vendor to service a same-sex wedding is not eliminating discrimination against the gay couple. It’s coercing the wedding vendor.”

That argument didn’t impress LGBT rights advocates. It also didn’t persuade corporate leaders. The CEO of California-based Salesforce announced that the tech company would cease all “non-essential” travel to the state, and the Disciples of Christ, a Christian denomination, said they’d pull their annual conference from Indianapolis in response to the bill. Indianapolis-based Angie’s List cancelled a planned expansion in the state, and artists, including the band Wilco, cancelled performances.

And thus, Pence and his allies in the legislature backtracked. Let’s be clear: They were not moved by some sudden epiphany that their bill would harm the state’s LGBT community. They were moved by money, and the possible lack of it.

The result, at least, is a fix that greatly restricts the harm originally posed by the RFRA. And the bill’s supporters are less than pleased by it. The American Family Association’s Micah Clark, who attended Pence’s private RFRA signing, begged the governor not to accept any sort of fix, saying, “That could totally destroy this bill.” The Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission’s Russell Moore also took to Twitter to express his dissatisfaction with the planned fix.

Meanwhile, a similar debate rages in Arkansas, as legislato

you know what....NO ONE forced them to close their business. if you can't stand the heat....stay away from the pizza ovens.

so, they got some negative reviews.....and supposed threats. do you really think the ijit teacher who tweeted "who's coming w me to torch that restaurant" actually had plans to do so???? i doubt it. more likely she was merely being an idiot and using poor judgement.

yes, people said some nasty and inappropriate things. as people do. but that happens to plenty of restaurants all the time. don't believe me? check some on line reviews of places that aren't anti-gay and you'll plenty of chowderheaded nastiness.

you know what....NO ONE forced them to close their business. if you can't stand the heat....stay away from the pizza ovens.

so, they got some negative reviews.....and supposed threats. do you really think the ijit teacher who tweeted "who's coming w me to torch that restaurant" actually had plans to do so???? i doubt it. more likely she was merely being an idiot and using poor judgement.

yes, people said some nasty and inappropriate things. as people do. but that happens to plenty of restaurants all the time. don't believe me? check some on line reviews of places that aren't anti-gay and you'll plenty of chowderheaded nastiness.

It's hard to argue with that, but I do find it hypocritical that this level of violent language and threats are given a pass whenever it's a cause that helps the extreme leftists (Democrat Party). The media that fanned this flicker into a national flame created another false narrative that we are just supposed to swallow. Or we become "intolerant".

The really funny thing is that this "outrage" is done in the name of being anti-discrimination. Ha! What a joke that is.

There are people using this for political advantage on several sides of this multi-divided nation. Fear drives people to become perpetrators of an agenda they wouldn't ordinarily support....and politicians know it. Fear is how the Democrats and Republicans raise money now. Get used to it.

Ridicule and personal assassination are the tools of the left, though. The shame is that so few know they are being played.

It's hard to argue with that, but I do find it hypocritical that this level of violent language and threats are given a pass whenever it's a cause that helps the extreme leftists (Democrat Party).

who's "getting a pass"? not the teacher who tweeted "who's joining me to burn that restaurant down?". she was suspended w/o pay (as she should be). likewise anyone who engages in violent acts like vandalism will suffer full consequences of the law

but are you saying you want people to be sanctioned and admonished for harsh language?

ya know, considering the harsh language that LGTG have ALWAYS been dealing w i'm inclined to give them a pass for any harsh and nasty language they're guilty of...that's how people react when they're hated, reviled, ridiculed, and yes...discriminated against.

There are people using this for political advantage on several sides of this multi-divided nation. Fear drives people to become perpetrators of an agenda they wouldn't ordinarily support....and politicians know it. Fear is how the Democrats and Republicans raise money now. Get used to it.

agreed.

Ridicule and personal assassination are the tools of the left, though. The shame is that so few know they are being played.

yeah, because no one on the right has ever used "Ridicule and personal assassination" in their attacks on obama, his wife, hilary, bill, biden, pelosi, or anyone in the current admin.

yep.....so few know they are being played!

I guess the takeaway from this discussion then, Planet - is that because the (faux) right does it too - it's OK...?

How I wish people would stop confusing the Republicans with the right - they are just the limp dicked version of the left.

Talbot

this whole fiasco is nothing but an extension of the Blacks Lunch Counter sit-ins of the 1950's-1960's.. nothing but an extension of Civil Rights for ALL CITIZENS, ..as business catering to the public, we can't pick and choose, who are clientele will be, like the segregated lunch counters of by-gone days..you treat all equally, in the secular business world, unless your customers have no shirt and shoes on, and then you can dismiss them for health code violations..LOL..

I guess the takeaway from this discussion then, Planet - is that because the (faux) right does it too - it's OK...?

How I wish people would stop confusing the Republicans with the right - they are just the limp dicked version of the left.

Talbot

nah, mike....not my point at all. i just don't like seeing people pointing fingers at the left for the same $hit the right does.

that two sets of rules never sits right for me. and now....i'm off to load the car up for tonight's gig.

everybody have yourself a great night and weekend!

And I don't like the left pointing fingers and lying and violating basic laws... I don't like it when the right does it also.

Have fun at your gig.