Please Tell Me It’s A Hoax

There are times when you run across a story so absurd that you have to wonder if you’re being pranked, either by the news media or by the people in the story itself. The unfortunate fact is that much of what you can read about online, even more so than traditional news outlets, is completely untrue and was created for the sole purpose of getting you to repeat it and get upset about it. So when the story about an ultra-Conservative group attempting to run a donut shop founded and run by a high school student out of business because they don’t like the name of the place first hit my desktop, I made a determined effort to find some indication that the story was a hoax. Unfortunately, this does not appear to be the case…

You can go to the local ABC affiliate station’s website and read it for yourself if you like, but even the station is saying that they can’t take responsibility for all of the details being correct. The story goes that conservative groups in the small town of Front Royal, Virginia, have converted the community into something right out of a Hollywood movie script, waging war on anything they consider to be insufficiently religious, including all references to magic, the supernatural, popular culture, music, pre-marital contact (of any kind) between people of different genders, or – apparently – donuts being sold in a store with a 1950s pin-up theme. It’s not exactly a new concept – every few years another small town somewhere in America will drop into a Footloose scenario and outlaw parties, mixed-gender social events, dancing, or whatever else has its elders in an uproar. This is the first time on record, at least as far as I can tell, that theocratic groups of this type have gone after someone for the name and theme of an otherwise harmless business, however…

I’m not going to present this as an ethics issue because I don’t believe there is another side to the story – a group of people are using their alleged religious convictions to cover their bigotry and hatred for anybody and anything different from themselves. I should acknowledge, I suppose, that I have no evidence that these so-called “Christian Conservatives” would react any differently if the donut shop was being run by a male entrepreneur, or someone whose surname is more Anglo than “Ramos,” but I know which way I would bet if I had to…

What makes this a business issue – and brings it into my purview in this blog – is that what they are actually attacking is a successful business run by a young woman who has managed to start up and run her operation while attending school full time. Even if we are willing to stipulate that running a donut shop with a slightly racy theme does somehow interfere with someone’s ability to practice a level of humorless, joyless religious fanaticism that even our Puritan ancestors would find embarrassing –and I am not willing to so stipulate, in fact – that does not change the fact that these wingnuts are infringing on someone’s right to operate a business and earn a living. And if they can do that to Ms. Ramos and her donut shop, and get away with it, what is to stop them from targeting any other woman-owned, minority-owned, or otherwise inconvenient business? For that matter, how long is it going to be before people with no religious convictions whatsoever start making up whatever stories they need to in order to drive a competitor out of business?

Assuming that this hasn’t already happened, of course…

Now, I must once again point out that I don’t have any independent confirmation of the story. I hope, more intensely than I can possibly tell you, that the whole thing turns out to be a hoax; that there really is a Tiana Ramos and that her Naughty Girl Donuts is thriving and prospering, surrounded by supportive townspeople who can’t even imagine why anyone would make them out to be a bunch of hateful fanatics. Because if this story is true it should sent a chill down the back of every entrepreneur and business owner in this country – and I will fear for the future of our Republic…