Atheist Complaint Means Big Business for Restaurant
Last month, I wrote about the Lost Cajun Kitchen, a small, mom-and-pop restaurant located in Pennsylvania. The restaurant made news, because it offered a discount on Sundays to anyone bringing in a church bulletin, and a particular atheist decided to sue them over it. Little did the restaurant owners know just how good that action would be for business!
As I noted in my July 6 posting, “John Wolff, who is an atheist, filed the complaint with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission against Prudhomme’s Lost Cajun Kitchen in Columbia.” Here’s more from the York Daily Record:
Wolff said the practice discriminates against him because he does not attend church.
“I did this not out of spite, but out of a feeling against the prevailing self-righteousness that stems from religion, particularly in Lancaster County,” said Wolff, a retired electrical engineer.
Sharon Prudhomme, one of the co-owners of the restaurant, said she is not discriminating because diners don’t have to actually attend a church or synagogue service to get a bulletin. She said area religious leaders told her that anyone can walk in a religious building and obtain a bulletin, without attending services.
Prudhomme added that she has no intention of changing the discount program, which she created to bring more traffic into her restaurant on a traditionally slow day.
So what happened next? Just like with Chick-fil-A, the attention has resulted in big business for the restaurant. As reported in The Christian Post, “Owner Sharon Prudhomme explained that business has been up and support has poured in from all over the country and even the world.”
“It has definitely picked up,” said Prudhomme to the York Daily Record, adding that “everybody that comes in [offers] a lot of handshakes, hugs. Everybody is offering a lot of support.”
Here’s what John Wolff had to say in his own words:
So… the man says he has no animosity toward the owners of the restaurant, yet contacts an organization in order to take legal action against it? Come on! No one is being discriminated against and no one is showing intolerance in this situation except for Wolff.
The local newspaper hit the nail on the head with their op-ed about Wolff by writing, “It seems, like so many atheist complaints are designed more to draw attention to oneself than to right a serious constitutional wrong.”
So church folks can come on a Sunday and get a 10 percent discount on their mess of crawfish if they hand over a church bulletin. Big deal.
Restaurants offer all sorts of discounts based on debatable criteria – to senior citizens, to youth sports teams, to people who buy the newspaper and clip out the coupons.
Wolff and the Freedom from Religion Foundation should find something better to do with their time. It seems the more attention they draw to blasting organizations that have Christian principles, the more it helps the organizations. Hmmm… maybe they should keep it up! Chick-fil-A and the Lost Cajun Kitchen seem to be doing just fine.
As this originally posted on The GOPUSA Blog I would like to insert my comment. It was made in reference to another commenter on how all this coverage of these stories is diviving the nation.
No ******, we are not creating division. The division was started when those on the left began to attack traditional family values. Now that they have willing allies in the mainstream media, activist judges and self-seeking bureaucrats, they somehow feel that they own a morale superiority when it comes to social issues.
What has happened is the majority of this country (ie- the ones that still believe in God and “That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”) are sick and tired of the minority left dictating to us how we are suppose to live and think. We’ve had enough of being made to feel that we are somehow wrong in our religious beliefs.
For the life of me, I just can’t understand how people who are so adamant about their freedom of speech and tolerance toward their beliefs and way of life can be so intolerant of others and quick to censor the speech of others that don’t agree with them.
No. We didn’t cause the division. We’re just tired of being blamed for it
This guy needs to walk the plank!