A rot is eating away at many of the United States’ urban areas. Once thriving centers of culture, food, art, and music, our cities have become infested with a liberal groupthink that has made them dirty, dangerous, and full of beanie-wearing, latte-scoffing hypocrites. You know the type — they flout their fancy degrees, wax on (and on and on) about their (intolerant) political pedigrees, applaud the members of their echo chamber, yet lack even a shred of common sense or self-awareness.

Nowhere is this more true than in Richmond, Virginia. Yes, Glenn Youngkin has taken up residence in the Governor’s Mansion there, but his conservative bona fides seemingly have not brought sanity to RVA. Once the pride of the commonwealth, Richmond is devolving into yet another woke dumpster fire.

A restaurant by the name of Metzger’s Bar and Butchery, located in the town’s Union Hill section, recently took it upon themselves to pass judgment on a pro-family, pro-life group that wished to dine there by refusing to serve them. Not only that, a creepster employee did a digital background check on the group, The Family Foundation of Virginia, resulting in their pre-booked reservation being canceled. The owners called to say they didn’t want the group’s business and that their wait staff wouldn’t serve them if they did show up.

Victoria Cobb, president of the conservative group, wrote about the experience over at The Federalist:

Their official explanation was that our pro-life and pro-traditional-marriage positions violated the “basic human rights” of women and LGBT individuals. What human right is more basic than the right to life? What family structure is more foundational than marriage between a man and a woman, the bedrock of Western civilization for thousands of years? Lest we forget, it wasn’t so long ago that, when running for president, Barack Obama declared that “marriage is between a man and a woman.”

As Cobb rightly points out, “Welcome to the 2020s, where people who consider themselves to be progressives, claim to preach ‘tolerance’ while demanding forced ‘acceptance’ and ‘celebration.’”

That’s exactly what is happening with uber-woke Metzger’s Bar and Butchery and their intolerant owners, who are patting themselves on the back for their vile way of doing business. In a statement released after receiving numerous bad Yelp reviews, well-deserved blowback for their fecklessness, the owners said they “have always refused service to anyone for making our staff uncomfortable or unsafe.” The group hadn’t even shown up on the premises, so that’s pure nonsense. They went on, “We respect our staff’s established rights as humans and strive to create a work environment where they can do their jobs with dignity, comfort and safety.”

So they respect the humanity of their staff, but not of their customers? Yet again, conservatives (or even those who just, you know, like families) find themselves the target of the illiberal, intolerant left. Food is a shared experience that’s supposed to unite us and celebrate our differences, but it’s now apparently a weapon to use against your ideological foes.

Cobb summed up the hypocrisy like this:

Welcome to the double standard of the left, where Jack Phillips must be forced to create a wedding cake as part of the celebration of a same-sex ceremony, to take an action that violates his beliefs, but any business should be able to deny a basic meal to a paying customer who holds traditional views about marriage. The double standard is sickening and reeks of this intolerant, unyielding doctrine wokeness preaches.

Exactly. A conservative business owner refuses business that goes against their belief system and it turns into a long, litigious nightmare. A liberal business owner does the same and everyone’s supposed to give them an award for their supposed bravery. It’s tiresome.

One person who thinks Metzger’s is in the wrong is Elizabeth Johnson Rice, a Richmond civil rights activist who was arrested for participating in the Thalhimers lunch counter sit-in back in 1960. Having seen firsthand what injustice looks like, Rice says the Family Foundation of Virginia was “not being treated fairly” by Metzger’s Bar and Butchery, concluding, “Their reservation should be honored in 2022.”

She’s exactly right, and those who value religious liberty should not let the intolerance shown by this restaurant stand.