On June 19, Kirstjen Nielsen, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, was heckled by protesters while dining at a Mexican restaurant in Washington, D.C. 

The reason: To protest the Trump administration’s separation of illegal alien parents from their children in detention centers.

Then, three nights later, on June 22, the owner of a Lexington, Virginia, restaurant asked White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave. 

The reason: To protest the Trump’s discrimination against transgenders’ entering the military. 

Those verbally assailing Nielsen shouted:

• “Do you hear the babies crying?”
• “If kids don’t eat in peace, you don’t eat in peace.”
• “Shame! Shame! Shame!”  
• “In a Mexican restaurant of all places. The fucking gall.”
• “No borders, no wall, sanctuaries for all.”

On June 23, Sanders tweeted her version of her requested exit: “Last night I was told by the owner of Red Hen in Lexington, VA to leave because I work for @POTUS and I politely left. Her actions say far more about her than about me. I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so.”

Sarah Huckabee Sanders

According to The Washington Post, the Red Hen’s co-owner, Stephanie Wilkinson, got a call from her staff, reporting that Sanders was at the restaurant. Several employees are gay and knew Sanders had defended Trump’s efforts to bar transgenders from the military.

She added that her restaurant has “certain standards that I feel it has to uphold, such as honesty, and compassion and cooperation.”

From her statement, Wilkinson clearly believed Sanders was dishonest, inhumane and uncooperative.

On June 25, President Trump tweeted: “The Red Hen Restaurant should focus more on cleaning its filthy canopies, doors and windows (badly needs a paint job) rather than refusing to serve a fine person like Sarah Huckabee Sanders. I always had a rule, if a restaurant is dirty on the outside, it is dirty on the inside!” 

Donald Trump

[Trump’s charge that the Red Hen is “dirty on the inside” was—as usual for him—false. 

[According to its most recent state health inspection in February, the Red Hen restaurant had zero violations.

[On the other hand: Florida health inspectors cited Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach with 15 violations in late January, 2017, days before Trump hosted Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe there for a diplomatic visit. 

Nor was this an exception. From 2014-2017, records show the club was cited 78 times for such violations as:

• Chefs handling food without washing their hands
• Dirty cutting boards
• A slicer “soiled with old food debris” and
• The “accumulation of black/green mold-like substance” in the ice machine.]

Mar-a-Lago

Ironically, Trump and his followers are responsible for Nielsen’s and Sanders’ evictions. They have pushed legislation allowing businesses to discriminate against anyone they dislike on the basis of “religious freedom.”

On March 26, 2015, Mike Pence, then Governor of Indiana before accepting Trump’s invitation to become his Vice Presidential nominee, signed into law the “Religious Freedom Restoration Act.” 

This allows any individual or corporation to cite its religious beliefs as a defense when sued by a private party.

Officially, its intent is to prevent the government from forcing business owners to act in ways contrary to strongly held religious beliefs. Unofficially, its intent is to appease the hatred of gays and lesbians by the religious Right, a key constituency of the Republican party.

In short, a bakery that doesn’t want to make a cake to be used at a gay wedding or a restaurant that doesn’t want to serve lesbian patrons can legally refuse to do so. Or a hospital can legally refuse to treat gay patients.

Although he praised the bill, Pence signed it in a ceremony closed to the public and the press. 

On the eve of invading the Soviet Union, Adolf Hitler told an aide: “At the beginning of each campaign, one pushes a door into a dark, unseen room. One can never know what is hiding inside.”

Maybe Pence—like Hitler—sensed that he, too, was about to push open “a door into a dark, unseen room.” 

On the day after Pence signed the Act, Bill Levin filed paperwork with the Indiana Secretary of State to register the First Church of Cannabis as a legitimate religious institution. The registration was approved.

By elevating religion above the law, Indiana’s legislators may have enabled Indiana’s Muslims to:

• Claim their right—guaranteed in Islamic religious law—to have as many as four wives.
• Demand a taxpayer-funded “halal” non-pork food shelf at free food pantries for the poor. (As happened among Somali refugees in Minnesota in 2015.)
• Demand that police departments cancel counter-terrorism courses by claiming that their materials are anti-Muslim. (As happened to several police departments in Illinois.)

And it was the Trump administration that supported the Supreme Court’s June 4 ruling 7-2 on behalf of a Colorado baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple. He had claimed that doing so would violate his religious beliefs against homosexuality. 

By championing the rights of businesses to legally discriminate against anyone they dislike—under the guise of “religious freedom”—Trump and his followers have opened a door that they themselves may now be forced to walk through.