News/Commentary

Politifact rates Biden’s claim gay Americans ‘can be tossed from restaurants’ mostly true

June 19, 2023 | | Print Article

President Joe Biden’s “Pride” pandering got a leg up Friday when fact checkers decided to play fast and loose with the “mostly true” designation after a highly dubious claim of discrimination.

For some, what the self-described Catholic president said at a “Pride Celebration” on the White House South Lawn was quickly overshadowed by gender ideologues going topless while the rainbow standard was displayed with prominence ahead of Old Glory.

But, many had taken notice of Biden’s suggestion that “something is still very wrong in America” and as BS meters registered off the charts PolitiFact swooped in for an assist to declare the “illustration is not without factual backing.”

As previously reported, on the same stage where he had coined the term “transjester,” the president had asserted, “But for all the progress we’ve made, we know, we know real change, real challenges still remain. When a person can be married in the morning and thrown out of a restaurant for being gay in the afternoon, something is still very wrong in America.”

“Although it drew criticism, Biden’s illustration is not without factual backing. Same-sex marriage is federally protected, but dining in a restaurant with your same-sex spouse is not,” PolitiFact detailed in their post that rated the claim “mostly true.”

Noting that “Some states have passed anti-discrimination laws, but in 22 states, it is legal under state law for proprietors to refuse service to customers based on their sexual orientation or gender identity,” PolitiFact skirted around the fact that the same thing could happen to a man and a woman.

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Of course, the fact-checkers had more to say on this in a way that only highlighted their water-carrying for the administration further as they pointed out, “However, it is hard to tell how often this sort of discrimination actually occurs and where.”

“We found news reports of same-sex couples being refused service as recently as 2021, but one expert said these instances are on the decline. There’s not good data on how often LGBTQ+ people are still discriminated against in public places, but Biden is accurate that it can happen in America, and is legally allowed in nearly half of the states in the U.S.” (emphasis added).

In fact, it’s so difficult to find examples that the most recent one provided by PolitiFact detailed how after a gay New York City couple had accused a restaurant worker of harassing them and kicking them out, the employee was the one punished.

That detail, not mentioned in the fact check, was one of several pertinent facts left out including that the original report said they cancelled their order and asked for their money back before calling the cops on the Hispanic woman who was heard defending her view that relationships should be between a man and a woman.

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NBC News reported she was fired, and the gay couple received an apology and an offer of a free meal.

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As the Washington Examiner’s Nathan Wurtzel put it, “They found ‘several instances’ over 7 years in a nation of 330 million. Yeah, sometimes people are a**holes. But this is so rare that calling it anything other than a lie means @PolitiFact are a bunch of corporate media Democrat liars.”

Kevin Haggerty
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