Woman Says Family Dollar Clerk Refused to Serve Her Because She’s Gay (Video)
New Orleans Customer Filmed Rant From Cashier She Says Is Anti-Gay
Melissa Langford say she’s a regular shopper at her local New Orleans Family Dollar store, but was shocked on Friday when she went to make her purchase and heard the cashier “loudly voicing her opinion on how much she hates gay people.” Langford says the cashier said gay people “got somethin wrong in they head,” “gays are sick,” and said “that she had the right to refuse service to anyone she wants.”
“I started to writhe away internally,” Langford wrote on her Facebook page. “I wanted to cry right then and there. In fact, I’m crying right now… cuz yall didn’t hear the hateful passion in her voice. She was so loud, so cruel, so uneducated… selfish and just outright mean.”
“I said, ‘excuse me, but im very very gay and you’re really offending me. Think what u want but keep it to yourself,'” Langford says she told the cashier.
When the man in front of her came to her defense, Langford says the cashier then refused to serve him too.
Langford told The Times-Picayune a manager came out from the back and “said, ‘I can’t control nothing. She can say and do what she wants.'”
Langford disagrees.
“Whether I’m right or wrong,” she says, the cashier “shouldn’t be treating a customer this way, and she can’t deny people service just because she feels like it.”
“You can feel any way you want to, as along as it doesn’t impede on someone else’s life.”
“My mind was blown. I couldn’t believe the things I was hearing this woman say,” Langford said Sunday. “It’s one thing if it was a customer in line being ignorant with her friends, but this is the cashier.”
Louisiana offers LGBT people no protections against discrimination. As governor, Bobby Jindal signed a “religious freedom” executive order specifically allowing businesses to refuse service to LGBT people, but earlier this month Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards rescinded that order, and expanded nondiscrimination protections for LGBT state employees.
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Image by Bart Everson via Flickr and a CC license
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