The owner of Langer's Deli, an L.A. institution, is under fire after he asked a gay couple to leave the restaurant for kissing.
A woman on Twitter, later identified as Rachel Curry, accused the deli's owner, Norm Langer, of creating an “unsafe space” for LGBTQ people and said the incident, in which he stood over her table with a walkie-talkie and humiliated her felt “violent and wrong.”
Langer responded with his own statement on Twitter and spoke with the L.A. Times.
In the statement, Langer said that “Langer's Deli is open and inclusive to all people,” adding “We have a long-standing policy against anyone from ‘making out' whether straight or same-sex couples, it does not matter. I have stopped heterosexual couples from making out, and I would do the same if Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were making out. We are a family restaurant and I apologize if some people do not like our policy.”
Curry responded in kind, calling the incident, “blatant discrimination against queer people. He said ‘I can't have this behavior in my restaurant. Coded language to tell us that our queer behavior would not be tolerated in his establishment.”
Said Langer to the L.A. Times: “The whole thing is absurd. The two ladies came in around 11:30, they were sitting next to each other and throughout the meal they started snuggling and making out. I walked over to the table and said, ‘Hi, I'm Norm Langer. I'm glad you're here, but it's not really a place to make out. They said are you against the LGBTQ community, and I said, ‘No, I'm not.'
“Where Pastrami Goes When It Dies”by fordsbasement is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
