Regulars stopped going to this man’s cafe after finding out he is gay
A cafe owner in Cairns, Australia, has revealed that his regular customers stopped visiting his business after finding out he is gay.
Jay Horne said that a few regular customers said they would not be visiting the Paradiso Cafe again after being told that Horne and other staff working at the cafe are gay.
Horne said that “the couple had a conversation in which they stated that they wouldn’t be coming here any more because we’re a gay-owned business.
“They still walk past every single day but now they refuse to acknowledge us,” he said.
The business owner joked that the people believed they would turn gay if they spent time in the cafe.
Horne quipped: “The only thing I could really think was, “Okay, maybe these people think that we have a disease or a virus that they were going to contract through our cafe”, or that they believed that if we touched them, they would end up gay.”
Horne wrote on Facebook about the incident instantly after it happened, and asked his friends if they too thought that they would “turn gay if you eat and drink at a gay owned and operated cafe?”.
He wrote: “I heard the funniest thing today… One of our regular “straight” couples have stopped frequenting our cafe because we are gay owned and operated and they had no idea.
Friends and family of Horne showed solidarity with the business with their comments, saying that they “enjoyed” the company and it was “their loss”.
“I was trying to figure out why I am gay … must have been the cafe and restaurants I ate at as a young impressionable boy,” another of Horne’s friends joked.
It seems Australian restaurant owners have nailed how to deal with homophobia, including the owner of the Beaufort in Melbourne who had a perfect put down of this homophobic review.
