A gay coffee shop owner in Seattle recently kicked a group of Christians out of his café, Bedlam Coffee, after learning they had been distributing tracts on the street before taking a break at his shop.
“We had nothing on us, we weren’t distributing anything,” said Caytie Davis, one of the Christians, according to The Christian Post.
She noted that the group had bought coffee and gone upstairs. Before visiting the shop, they had been passing out gospel tracts and pro-life materials in the city, and as they sat, owner Ben Borgman confronted them and shouted, “You have to leave.”
One of the Christians asked if Borgman was denying them service, and he responded by asking them if they would be willing to watch him perform a vulgar act on his boyfriend.
In an expletive-laced rant, he told them to leave.
Offensive comments
As the group left, one of the Christians told Borgman that Christ could save him from his lifestyle, and he responded with vulgar and offensive comments about Jesus.
When asked about his comments later, Borgman said they were “out of context” — that he was simply trying to address the group in language they would understand.
The group said they don’t wish any harm to come to the owners of Bedlam Coffee, according to the Post. But hundreds of thousands of people have viewed the footage of the incident posted online.
This comes at a time when several Christian business owners are being sued by same-sex couples for refusing their business on the grounds of their religious convictions — including one in the same state as Bedlam Coffee.
Barronelle Stutzman, a florist in Washington State, said she could lose her entire life savings after declining to provide flowers for a gay couple’s wedding. The couple sued her in 2013 and she lost and has now appealed to the Supreme Court.
Same freedom
Gay couples have “every right to live the way they believe,” said Stutzman, but she asked for Christians to be given the same freedom.
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