A new online fundraiser by the LGBT community has been launched in direct response to recent news that a pizza restaurant in Indiana, Memories Pizza, has garnered support for openly refusing to serve pizza at the weddings of the LGBT community. Their public announcement led to an online fundraiser, which has raised more than $800,000 for the discriminatory business.
As a response, a variety of Michigan-based LGBT and allied groups are hoping to raise money from "true" pizza lovers who also support same-sex marriage with a variety of different online fundraisers.
Lori Pimlott-Calvin and her wife, Jill Calvin, have set up "Pizza Lovers For Marriage Equality at http://www.gofundme.com/Pizza-lovers-forma, where proceeds will benefit the National Marriage Challenge. "We want to offset all the hate going on in this country. We want to support a family that is just trying to take care of each other," Lori said. "The Michigan Religious Freedom Restoration Act is dangerous in that it just creates more hate, more discrimination."
JJason Nguyen also set up the "Love Is Stronger Than Hate" campaign at http://gofund.me/LoveIsStronger. Raised funds will go to the Human Rights Campaign to aid them in their efforts to promote equality.
"Amazing, the Indiana pizzeria who proclaimed that they would not cater gay weddings has had donations of $190,000 pour in over the last day. Our gay marriage court case has not generated that much money in over 3 years… hate money is strong while love money is weak?" wrote Jayne Rowse in a Facebook post. Rowse, together with her partner April DeBoer, are the plaintiffs in Michigan's same-sex marriage case that will be before the U.S. Supreme Court this month.
So far, "love money" has reached over $2,000 between the two campaigns, with more online fundraisers to support LGBT equality in the making.
Local Pizza Lovers Start Fundraiser
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