A Cajun restaurant that featured on a popular Guy Fieri food show has sparked outrage for offering a meal special only for the “real kind of couple” that “can produce a child.”
Darwell Yeager and his wife Nettie, who run Darwell’s Happiness Cafe in Long Beach, Mississippi, shared a special offer with customers in a Facebook video Wednesday to celebrate Couples Day — which is typically observed annually on August 18.
“Darwell’s,” the owner sings at the beginning of the video while his wife dances beside him. “If you come in and you’re a couple no longer, how long have you been together —dating, married— if you’re a couple?”
“Husband, wife. Boyfriend, girlfriend. Guy and girl couple. The ‘real kind’ of the couple,” he continued, gesturing air quotes.
Nettie Yeager jumped in, sporting a pair of oversized sunglasses.
“Oh, cuz we don’t do the trans or the lesbians or gays,” she said. “I’m sorry, that’s out on the street.”
“Can produce a child couple,” Darwell Yeager added. “We’ll give you something free. How do you like that, folks?”
“Real food for real people, made for real couples,” he signed off as he pointed down the camera lens.
The video has since gone viral after a nearby restaurant, the Trax Bar and Grill, posted a screen recording when it was taken down from the Darwell’s Happiness Cafe Facebook page.
“I am almost speechless. Almost. His weird antics were tolerable at best until this video but not anymore,” Trax Bar and Grill’s owner Jessica Notter wrote. “The disgust I feel for statements made in this video is immeasurable.”
The restaurant, which was featured on Guy Fieri's Diners, Drive-ins and Dives and named one of Forbes’ restaurants of the year in 2016, has sparked a backlash from other local businesses, LGBTQ+ communities, and social media users.
The Gulf Coast Equality Council, a non-profit organization that supports LGBTQ+ communities and their allies, voiced its disapproval in a video statement released Thursday. The press release stated that “no one should be made to feel unwelcome simply for being who they are.”
Angela Singletary, president of the anti-bullying organization The Society, said a peaceful protest outside the restaurant is expected on Friday.
“It's important that we don't allow this kind of discrimination and these kinds of comments to... just go. We can't just let them go,” Singletary said.
After a swathe of backlash, Nettie Yeager issued an apology on her personal Facebook account and cited her religious views.
Mississippi's Religious Liberty Accommodations Act was passed into law in 2016. It gives organizations the right to refuse service to members of the LGTBQ+ community—which makes up 3.5 percent of the state’s population—based on religious views.
“I’m not perfect and I get my feelings hurt too,” she wrote. “Not always right. But I'm human too... I'm truly sorry if you got offended or misunderstood something not meant to hurt anyone.
According to NOLA, Darwell reposted the apology on his Facebook page six times, but the posts were removed by Friday morning.
He added that in his own statement that he was “tired of being bullied by the left.”
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