Notice that the gay couple were there first. But you know how tolerant and easy to get along with maga Christians are … only if they get their own way all the time. Otherwise they are violent self entitled gang thugs who can not be talked to, reasoned with, coexisted with. Look how tolerant these people are of LGBTQIA kids and people who are a different non-white skin tone, that is how they want communities and businesses to be run also, totally intolerant and aggressively unaccepting demands they be removed from the public. Hugs. Scottie.
A slew of dirty tricks marked the MAGA family’s reign of terror, and the couple couldn’t take it anymore.
The Front Porch Market and Grill in The Plains, VAPhoto: Screenshot DMV Adventures
Gay restaurant owners William Waybourn and Craig Spaulding have hung up their aprons.
The longtime married couple have sold the restaurant they founded several years ago, the Front Porch Market and Grill in The Plains, VA. The new owner will change the name and try to make a fresh start with the restaurant’s combative Christian and MAGA-loving neighbors, Mike and Melissa Washer, who did their best to drive the gays next door out of business — and succeeded.
They’re trying to get their gay neighbors’ restaurant closed by any means possible.
“In the end, the decision was easier to make than I expected,” Waybourn told The Washington Post, which detailed the years-long feud — instigated by the Washers not long after they moved into the neighboring property — last July.
News of the Christian couple’s dirty tricks and clinical obsession with making their neighbors’ lives miserable brought Waybourne and his husband support from around the world.
“On some level, I know I am disappointing many people, especially those who have stood by us these past three years, many of whom I have never met from places I’ve never heard of,” Waybourn explained.
But he said he knows that for his own health and well-being, and for his adopted town’s, he needed to step away from the toxic environment that the MAGA-loving Washers had created.
For the longtime gay rights activist, who proudly flew a rainbow flag from the restaurant’s porch since it opened, there was no compromising with people who planted a rat by his back door and then shared a picture of it with the local health department. Incessant complaints over garbage, deliveries, parking, noise, Covid mandates, permitting, no-trespassing orders on both sides, and a lawsuit followed.
Restaurant employees reported Mike Washer had called the owners “f****ts”.
The Washers were MAGA bullies, and there was no stopping them.
Last summer, Waybourn was knocked back with a mild stroke, revealing the toll the Washers’ campaign was exacting.
For a few months after that, things quieted down.
But in November, after the Washers’ son was elected to the Board of Supervisors, a fresh round of harassment came The Front Porch’s way. The restaurant’s so-called Christian MAGA oppressors were relentless.
“My presence became so personal with the Washers that removing myself would give the new owner and the restaurant a fresh start,” Waybourn concluded.
The couple sold the Front Porch at the end of December.
Waybourn describes the restaurant’s new owner, chef and restaurateur Shawn Malone, as “very laid-back.”
Malone has a five-year lease on the building from Waybourn and Spaulding, with an option to buy. Plans are for the new business to open in February under the name Bistro at the Porch.
Waybourn hopes Malone can set the restaurant — and the relationship with his neighbors — on a new course. “I don’t think he’s going to personalize the Washers’ antics as much as I have.”
“I just can’t continue to have the emotional turmoil of owning a business that I can’t enjoy,” Waybourn said.
Thanks again to Ten Bears for the link. If you ever run out of news and informative stuff to dive into, then seriously check out Ten Bears posts. He puts a ton of links on a page, enough to last a day of reading if you are interested in them all. https://homelessonthehighdesert.com/2024/01/19/frigsday-finally/
When the right attacked people supporting the Palestinians who had used the phrase from the river to the sea, claiming it was a saying to wipe out all Israelis. They got people fired over it. However when Netanyahu (Bibi) demands it for Israel which means genocide of the Palestinians, the right is quite fine with it. See it was not the phrase nor what it stands for that bothered the right, it was that some people defend the poor down trodden people being abused around the world. The right doesn’t like the left and they hate their supported right wing leaders / countries justly attacked, so they lash out to destroy any complaints against their right wing abuse and tyranny. Hugs. Scottie
The Israeli newspaper Arab 48 reports on the press conference in Tel Aviv on Thursday evening of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. He vowed to continue the war on Gaza and vowed to attack Iran. “Who says we won’t attack Iran? We will attack it.”
At one point Netanyahu insisted that in any foreseen arrangement for the future, “Israel must control all the lands west of the Jordan.”
(It is worth noting that such a massive annexation of Palestinian territory would expand Israel from the river to the sea, and would permanently destroy any possibility of a Palestinian state.
When supporters of Palestinian rights use this phrase, Zionists allege that it is murderous toward Israelis. They are wrong — it is a demand for political rights for Palestinians. Marc Lamont Hill was actually fired from CNN for using this phrase in a pro-Palestinian speech at the United Nations. The odious Rep. Elise Stefanik got Claudine Gray fired as president of Harvard because she would not categorize the phrase, used in pro-Palestinian student demonstrations, as Antisemitic.
But when Netanyahu says it, we should in fact understand it to be murderous toward Palestinians, since no one in history has killed as many Palestinian civilians as Netanyahu.)
Netanyahu said, “Complete victory requires the return of our hostages to their homes, the disarming of Gaza, and security oversight over what enters Gaza.” He emphasized that “ending the war before achieving our goals will harm the security of Israel for generations.”
He said that his government had passed an enormous military budget that would help the army realize its war aims and achieve victory. He cautioned, “Victory will take more long months, but we are determined to accomplish it.”
He “completely rejected” the repeated assertions by present and former Israeli political officials in television interviews that victory is impossible. Faced with protests over his failure to bring back Israeli hostages, he insisted that it was military pressure that would free them. He said that ending the war would broadcast a message of weakness and it would then be only a matter of time until there was another bloodbath. He was referring to the sickening Hamas attack of October 7, the bulk of whose victims were innocent civilians.
Regarding reports that he had rejected the American suggestion of establishing a Palestinian state, the embattled prime minister, who is deeply unpopular, attempted to tie his fate to that of the nation, replying, “What the political parties call in Israel ‘the day after’ means for them ‘the day after Netanyahu.’ . . . Whoever speaks of the day after Netanyahu in reality is speaking of the establishment of a Palestinian state via the Palestine Authority. That isn’t the day that follows Netanyahu but is the ‘day after’ for the majority of Israeli citizens.”
He said of US influence in Israel that the Israeli prime minister must be able to say “no” even to the dearest of friends.
Barak Ravid reported this week at Axios that US President Joe Biden is deeply frustrated with Netanyahu’s intransigence and has not spoken with him in nearly a month. Ravid says during that last conversation, Biden was pressing Netanyahu to restore the funding he had cut from the Palestine Authority (the West Bank rival of Hamas). Netanyahu rejected all of Biden’s suggestions for a workaround. Biden allegedly said, “This conversation is over.” And, it has been over ever since.
On Sunday, some 400,000 protesters demonstrated in Washington, DC, against the ongoing war, alleging that Biden is facilitating genocide. Democratic Party leaders such as Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer have expressed anxiety about the impact of Biden losing the Arab and Muslim American votes, which have sometimes been swing votes in Michigan and some other key states.
Netanyahu is on trial for corruption and fears going to jail if he loses his current position. Opinion polling suggests that he and his coalition partners would be crushed at the polls if the government fell and new elections were held now. Some polls show that only 15% of Israelis want Netanyahu to remain at his post once the war on Gaza ends. Many Israelis blame him for the security failures attendant on the October 7 terrorist attack. He in turn has represented himself as the only one who can stand up to pressure for the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Ten Bears again has posted a must watch short historical video.I did not know a lot of the information in the video, and it so closely matches what some are trying to do today.I think that might be because the same people now older and wealthy enough to fund this grew up during that time believing in that idea.They couldn’t get it done then, they think they can now. We must not let them, we must stop them as they were stopped then.Hugs. Scottie
Discussing the incredible speech given by academic, activist, and BET host Marc Lamont Hill at Saint Sabina over the recent protest (and subsequent reaction) to Joe Biden’s speech at Mother Emanuel AME.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just said the quiet part out loud, in complete rejection of what the Biden administration has been trying to accomplish while at the same time taking all the money & aid the U.S. has been providing.
By my dogs that love gravy … damn, damn, damn, fucking bastards, goddamn swear word swear word. I can not even think of enough vile words to say about this. This is a sickening example of how the Israeli government see the Palestinians, including children. I watched a video this morning of an Israeli government official justifying this mass slaughter and genocide saying they were not causing it, Hamas was. They hit us (why because we were mistreating their people) hurting / killing 1,200 hundred of our so we can kill over 23,000 of them 10,000 of them confirmed children, and force the others to live in worse conditions than abandon animals. Oh, and Israel took over a university / school system in Gaza, used it as their headquarters, “interrogated” Palestinians there, then proudly blew it all up, so no Palestinian could come back and someday be educated there. That is a war crime. All of this is.
13 year old children trying to be the parents of 7 siblings because their parents are dead, with only other refuges to help. They have nothing, and Israel gloats over this. I am angry. Hugs. Scottie
As Israel presses on against Hamas in Gaza, children there are facing growing misery. Richard Engel reports on a 13-year-old who is now raising his seven siblings after his parents were likely killed.
Bigots are everywhere, and it’s important to take the chance to laugh at them when we can. Ashley Gavin has a good laugh at a terrible pastor. Miranda Scholl breaks it down on Rebel HQ.
The Front Porch Market and Grill in The Plains, VAPhoto: Screenshot DMV Adventures
Scottie's Playtime 