Politifact Defends Biden’s Absurd Claim About Restaurants Kicking Gay People Out
The Biden administration has gone all out to celebrate “LGBT Pride Month” this year, including an event at which the “Progressive Pride” flag took a place of prominence over the American flag and invited guests stripped naked on the White House lawn.
Some of President Joe Biden’s remarks during the June 10 event also drew criticism, including one about the supposed prevalence of U.S. restaurateurs who go out of their way to eject patrons based on their sexual orientation.
“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,” he said.
Of course, he offered no evidence to back up his claim that LGBT individuals are frequently — or ever — ordered to leave restaurants based on that factor alone. That did not stop attendees from cheering his divisive rhetoric, though, and at least one left-leaning “fact-checking” website was willing to label his comment “mostly true” despite admitting that there is no proof.
In its defense of Biden’s remark, Politifact noted that he “made a similar statement in December” that also “drew criticism” at the time.
Nevertheless, the report claimed that his “illustration is not without factual backing.”
After acknowledging that Americans do not have a constitutional right to dine at a restaurant, Politifact further admitted that “it is hard to tell how often this sort of discrimination actually occurs and where.”
Even if LGBT patrons have been kicked out for their orientation in the past, the article cited an expert who “said these instances are on the decline.”
Additionally, the fact-checkers noted that there is “not good data on how often LGBTQ+ people are still discriminated in public places.”
Nevertheless, the report concluded that since “it can happen in America, and is legally allowed in nearly half of the states in the U.S.,” Biden’s claim deserves a “mostly true” rating.
It is worth noting that Politifact took a decidedly different approach to fact-checking reports about a restaurant owner who admitted kicking Sarah Huckabee Sanders — President Donald Trump’s press secretary at the time — out of the restaurant.
Even though Stephanie Wilkinson confirmed that she ejected Sanders for working in an “inhumane and unethical” administration and felt compelled to “make uncomfortable actions and decisions” to uphold her “morals,” Politifact characterized claims that she threatened Sanders as “false.”
