A short YouTube live-stream monologue by TJ Walker (The Habit Influencer) discussing the public backlash against Memories Pizza, an Indiana pizza shop whose owner said they would refuse to cater gay weddings. Walker reflects on how expressing controversial opinions publicly can lead to severe consequences for small businesses in the digital age.
Chapters
Memories Pizza, a restaurant in Indiana, is about to become a distant memory. So, folks, you've heard about the controversy in Indiana, where legislation was signed into law that would ostensibly make it legal for businesses to refuse service to gay individuals and gay couples. Well, one business was a place called Memories Pizza. One of their owners gave an interview to a local broadcast saying, and he said explicitly, he or she said explicitly that they would not be serving pizza, catering pizza to gay weddings. Now, 10, 20, 30, maybe even five years ago, this wouldn't have generated much controversy. But times have changed. This provoked such an outrage. Customers, and would be customers are calling, making threats, apparently even death threats, explosion threats certainly don't condone that sort of activity. They've been bombarded on Yelp with people trashing them. And as a pizza place, apparently hundreds if not thousands of people have been calling and placing requests for pizzas to be delivered that are not real orders. This obviously wreaks havoc on a pizza place. They decided to shut down, at least temporarily. So what's the message here, folks? I'm not suggesting that no one has a right to speak an opinion, or that you don't have a right to have an unpopular opinion, or that you don't have a right to express your religious beliefs, whatever that is. But in this day and age, just because everyone you know may share your belief, you can't assume that there aren't a lot of other people out there who feel quite differently. Now, it's one thing to have a different opinion about a lot of different issues, global warming, for example. But when you have an opinion that essentially says that other people are subhuman, the deficient, wrong, and you speak that out loud and say that you refuse to do business with them, you do need to be prepared for the consequences and you need to look at your vulnerability. If you're a pizza shop, obviously you're vulnerable in the sense that if a thousand people call you and order pizzas and they don't intend on paying it or accepting it, it could put you out of business. So my challenge to business owners is, first of all, I think if it's a political opinion, and you're not a full time political commentator, maybe you should just share that opinion with immediate friends, family, colleagues, maybe you shouldn't share it in a broadcast environment, which is now a digital environment, which will be seen by the whole world. So if you want to weigh in on issues of extreme controversy that are considered life and death by many, you've got to be able to face the consequences. So the good news for this pizza shop owner. They're not going to have to cater any gay weddings. The bad news is it doesn't look like they'll be catering any weddings or serving any regular customers either.
