Supporters of an Indiana pizza restaurant that was thrust into the national spotlight after one of its owners said she wouldn’t cater a gay wedding have raised more than $160,000.
Donations for Memories Pizza in Walkerton, Indiana, have poured in to the website gofundme.com on April 2 to help “relieve the financial loss endured by the proprietors’ stand for faith.” The site had collected 5,777 donations totaling $163,621 as of 1:15 p.m. Thursday in New York.
Memories Pizza has been criticized since one of its owners, Crystal O’Connor, told a local television station the restaurant wouldn’t cater a gay wedding because of the proprietors’ Christian faith. The comment came in the context of a debate over Indiana’s recently enacted religious-freedom law.
“If a gay couple was to come and they wanted us to bring pizzas to their wedding, we’d have to say ‘no,'” Crystal O’Connor told ABC 57 in South Bend.
The O’Connors have said they wouldn’t refuse to serve gay customers at the restaurant in a town of about 3,000 located roughly 140 miles north of Indianapolis. Kevin O’Connor told TMZ.com that the backlash, including threatening phone calls, had forced the restaurant to close temporarily.
