Big Guys Sausage Ready for a 'Big Gay Wedding' ... and Standing Up for LGBT Kids

The owner of Big Guys Sausage Stand wants to stand up for gays and lesbians, says Brendan O’Connor, and he’ll put your money where his mouth is if you agree.

O’Connor recently created a GoFundMe page and promises to donate the proceeds to a charity that works with gay and lesbian youth. The owner of the Berwyn weiner joint on Roosevelt Road — whose website boasts of serving “blue-collar gourmet food” and features a curiously Ditka-esque mustachioed wiener logo — says he was moved to do so by the massive outpouring of financial support for the owner of an Indiana pizzeria. In two days, more than $842,000 was contributed to a GoFundMe account created for the owners of Memories Pizza in small-town Walkerton, IN, a quaint little pizzeria decorated with Jesus mementos.

The owner, in a TV interview about Indiana’s new Religious Freedom Restoration Act, said she supported the law and would never cater a gay wedding due to her religious beliefs.

“If a gay couple came in and wanted us to provide pizzas for their wedding, we would have to say no,” Crystal O’Connor said.

Despite how unlikely such a request might be, the ensuing social media backlash overwhelmed her and compelled her to turn off the pizza oven and lock the doors to Memories for a while. She never imagined her comments would turn her little pizzeria into a battleground between equal rights and religious views. A conservative radio station, The Blaze, opened up a GoFundMe, and within 48 hours almost $1 million was contributed on her behalf. The fund is no longer accepting donations.

Brendan O’Connor found the massive support for discrimination hard to swallow.

So he went to GoFundMe, too, and asked for money.

“If you think it is absurd that our restaurant has a campaign soliciting money for just following the law and not discriminating against any groups of people, you would be correct. However it is not nearly as absurd as Memories Pizza getting almost $1 million in donations for doing the opposite,” he wrote on the page.

So far, more than $1,300 has been contributed by five dozen people.

“You might get served by a Haitian, or Mexican or even a Rastafarian guy, but no matter who serves you they will do so without condemnation or scorn. ... The only time we might judge you is if you come in pushing your beliefs on us, especially if those beliefs are used to justify hate and discrimination.”

The Indiana law has since been revised to bar discrimination based on race, color, religion, ancestry, age, national origin, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or U.S. military service. And O’Connor has come forward to say anyone and everyone is welcome in her pizzeria.

“We service anyone. I don’t care who it is. I don’t care if they’re covered with tattoos, I don’t care if they got rings in their ears. I don’t care if they’re gay,” Crystal O’Connor told the L.A. Times. “The only thing I said was I cannot condone gay marriage.”

Brendan O’Connor, however, says Big Guys Sausage is ready to bring his homemade wieners to any “Big Gay Wedding.”

Now, if we could only acknowledge the absurdity of pizza and sausage being served at any wedding, gay or straight.

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