A popular Los Angeles gay bar is saying “I don’t.”
The famed West Hollywood watering hole The Abbey is getting into the same-sex marriage fight, by banning bachelorettes from celebrating their upcoming nuptials at the bar until marriage equality is reached.
"We love our straight girlfriends," the bar’s owner, David Cooley, said in a statement released Thursday. "But it's also a slap in the face to my customers and my life that we can't have that same celebration.
Twice-named the “Best Gay Bar in the World,” The Abbey can see as many as 10,000 patrons come in the doors on a Friday or Saturday night — including the throngs of straight girls that flood in every weekend to ogle the male go-go dancers.
But as America’s debate over same-sex marriage reaches fever pitch, Cooley is putting his foot down.
“It was just kind of, enough is enough,” The Abbey spokesman Brian Rosman told the Daily News.
The bachelorette ban comes on the heels of North Carolina’s recent state law definig marriage as between a man and a women — a law written into the constitution in nearly all the Southern states and several others.
California was the second U.S. state to allow same-sex marriage, in 2008, before the right was stripped only five months later with the passage of Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.
It was around then that The Abbey started getting increasing complaints from gay customers who were uncomfortable with straight couples flaunting their approaching weddings, Rosman said.
Rosman said the bar won’t lift the ban until marriage equality is achieved for everyone, everywhere.
“We're not limiting anyone's rights," he said. "People can have bachelorette parties anywhere they want — just not at The Abbey."
The famed West Hollywood watering hole The Abbey is getting into the same-sex marriage fight, by banning bachelorettes from celebrating their upcoming nuptials at the bar until marriage equality is reached.
"We love our straight girlfriends," the bar’s owner, David Cooley, said in a statement released Thursday. "But it's also a slap in the face to my customers and my life that we can't have that same celebration.
Twice-named the “Best Gay Bar in the World,” The Abbey can see as many as 10,000 patrons come in the doors on a Friday or Saturday night — including the throngs of straight girls that flood in every weekend to ogle the male go-go dancers.
But as America’s debate over same-sex marriage reaches fever pitch, Cooley is putting his foot down.
“It was just kind of, enough is enough,” The Abbey spokesman Brian Rosman told the Daily News.
The bachelorette ban comes on the heels of North Carolina’s recent state law definig marriage as between a man and a women — a law written into the constitution in nearly all the Southern states and several others.
California was the second U.S. state to allow same-sex marriage, in 2008, before the right was stripped only five months later with the passage of Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.
It was around then that The Abbey started getting increasing complaints from gay customers who were uncomfortable with straight couples flaunting their approaching weddings, Rosman said.
Rosman said the bar won’t lift the ban until marriage equality is achieved for everyone, everywhere.
“We're not limiting anyone's rights," he said. "People can have bachelorette parties anywhere they want — just not at The Abbey."
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