Peter Lassen Brings His Homophobic Bigotry To Los Feliz, Update

Thursday night we broke the very local story about a virulently anti-gay family buying a health food store in Los Feliz Village, between Los Feliz and Silverlake, two of Los Angeles' most gay-friendly neighborhoods. The Lassen family-- and Lassen's Natural Foods-- was notorious just north of L.A. last year when they poured tens of thousands of dollars into the Mormon effort to make same sex marriage unconstitutional.

The last part of the post somehow just disappeared into the ether. And-- doesn't this always happen-- I got tons of questions about the points in that last paragraph. First and foremost was the question, "did you buy anything in the store?" From my Facebook page:


Simple answer: I was holding a container of blueberries when I put 2 + 2 together and immediately replaced it and walked out of the store. There's no possibility I would ever buy anything in such a place under any circumstances. I asked some stranger working there if they kept any of the old employees. He said, "Look around, we kept almost all of them." I looked. There wasn't one familiar face. Just a lot of strangers... like people who look like they're from Lassen County.

The other big question was why the Mormons are so anti-gay. To be honest, the Mormons have been victims of bigotry-- often brutally-- since their religion started up in the 1830s. And many Mormons don't want anything to do with bigotry. John Amato-- the blogosphere's foremost expert on Mormonism (he watches Big Love)-- told me that Joseph Smith insisted that the Mormon Church he founded was "a progressive church." Even if millions of Mormons don't want any truck with the anti-gay bigotry, the Church elders made a deal with the far right Evangelicals-- the primary tormentors of Mormons-- and it was like making their bones, Mafia style, on an attack against gay people. The Mormons I know personally aren't part of that. The Lassen family very much is.

UPDATE

There's now a petition circulating in the neighborhood. In part:

Los Feliz & nearby Silver Lake are neighborhoods that overwhelmingly support freedom and equality. Lassen's, the company which recently took over the Nature Mart health food store on Hillhurst Ave., exercised its freedom to spend about $30,000 to help pass Prop 8 which took away the freedom of others, stripping equal rights from same-sex couples who simply want to marry the person they love.

Of course Lassen's should be free to spend their money in support of their beliefs, but a huge number of local residents (of all backgrounds and orientations) don't want our money being used to promote discriminatory laws. We plan to exercise our freedom by not giving ANY money to Lassen's and by telling our neighbors why.

To the Lassen family: If someone ever tries to pass a law restricting your right to practice Mormonism, we'll be right alongside you in defending your freedom.