US pizzeria that vowed not to serve gay weddings closes its doors

Back in 2015, a family-owned Indiana pizzeria made headlines for stating that it would refuse to serve gay weddings.

A controversial piece of legislation, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, would have allowed them to do so.

Passed in 2015, the Act - which enabled companies to cite religious beliefs as a legal defence against the refusal of service - was met with widespread backlash, which led to a revision being made and then signed by Governor Mike Pence. This new iteration explicitly banned businesses from denying service to customers on the basis of their gender or sexuality.

The aforementioned pizzeria became a central focus of the debate, which escalated when co-owner Kevin O'Connor gave more controversial quotes in a follow-up interview:

That lifestyle is something they choose. I choose to be heterosexual. They choose to be homosexual.

Why should I be beat over the head to go along with something they choose?

Three years later, the business is reported to be closing its doors for good - an announcement which will likely thrill LGBT+ citizens of Indiana. The company hasn't gone out of business - instead, the owners have simply chosen to retire. Luckily for them, a GoFundMe page conceived to help recuperate financial damage and symbolically "combat the leftist hatred expressed on [the pizzeria's] page" raised more than $840,000.

Owners later felt compelled to state - unsurprisingly - that he and his wife weren't homophobic, simply that they disagreed with same-sex marriage.

He then, bizarrely, made further clarifications:

I mean, we don't believe in murder. I also don't believe in abortion.

Ironically, he was less deterred from providing wedding services to unions made up of divorced couples.

You know, that's something that I don't have figured out in my mind yet, because I'm divorced.

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