Cracker Barrel is the latest large business to be attacked by conservatives for supporting LGBTQ+ people during Pride Month.
On Facebook, the country restaurant and store chain posted a picture of a rainbow rocking chair with a Pride Month message: “We are excited to celebrate Pride Month with our employees and guests. Everyone is always welcome at our table (and our [rainbow] rocker). Happy Pride!”
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The anti-LGBTQ+ organization Texas Family Project, though, was offended by the idea that everyone would be welcome at Cracker Barrel.
“We take no pleasure in reporting that Cracker Barrel has fallen,” the group tweeted. “A once family friendly establishment has caved to the mob.”
The group added some screenshots that showed Cracker Barrel’s support for Pride as well as a statement that Cracker Barrel won’t discriminate.
“Discrimination, overt or through unconscious bias, has no place at Cracker Barrel Old Country Store,” one of the offending messages reads.
Some people expressed their dismay that Cracker Barrel doesn’t hate LGBTQ+ people.
Pride goeth before the fall.
— Lisa Almstead
(@LisaAlmstead) June 8, 2023
Because all the Pride-friendly grandparents we take out on Sunday morning, right?
There apparently isn't a damn sanctuary for average people anymore to just enjoy some damn food without being preached to about what they MUST accept. Shove it, rocker world.
— But it's a Dry Heat (@am_constance) June 8, 2023
But others mocked the Texas Family Project.
Comrades, we have taken Cracker Barrel pic.twitter.com/VdIRLjEhd7
— gardenin' borbs
(@ronninator) June 9, 2023
The move comes three decades after Cracker Barrel took a firm stance against LGBTQ+ equality. In 1991, the company said that it would not hire gay people and fired at least eleven employees for being gay. Several months after the purge, the company’s shareholders voted to add sexual orientation to its nondiscrimination policy and ended the policy.
LGBTQ Pride Talk 