If you’re confused about which companies with “Roots” in their name to boycott, here’s a refresher: Wandering Roots and Roots Coffeehouse are fine. Roots Market is the homophobic one.
Oh, there’s also a wedding venue called Roots Fort Worth, which doesn’t allow same-sex marriages on-site.
Phew! It’s almost exhausting keeping track of all this open discrimination.
After denying an application from an LGBTQ+ vendor recently, Roots Market’s owners released a statement on Facebook proclaiming that they wanted to respond to recent “attacks” against them — a classic line among conservatives and other hypocrites who once described so-called snowflakes as dramatic and reactionary. Roots managers went on to explain that they decided to not to work with the vendor because they are a Biblically focused brand founded on Christian values. How “love thy neighbor” fits into them was conveniently glossed over when Roots said in their statement, “We have love and compassion for those who identify as LGBTQ+. And we firmly believe in God’s design for marriage and family.”
About a dozen protestors took to West Magnolia Avenue on Saturday outside the market, carrying Pride flags and signs saying, “Don’t shop here” and “Honk for equality.”
Turning away a vendor just before market day and telling her it was because you did not know she is queer seems like a strange way to express love and compassion.
It’s an interesting idea for an open-air market-hosting business to be Biblically based. As if there is a way to participate in capitalism that is specifically godly. Jesus was a famous anti-capitalist who advocated for redistribution of wealth and the wealthy giving away their possessions. Not that starving artists typically end up belonging to the 1%, but you get the point.
It’s also not the way Jesus would treat someone. Jesus opened his arms to everyone, regardless of their lifestyles or sex lives. To claim to be Biblically based and then reject someone because you disagree with their beliefs is almost funny in its misunderstanding of what it means to be Christlike. (For the uninitiated, that’s a popular term among Christians for the ideal standard to set for oneself.)
If the Roots Market folks want to reject a certain vendor, of course, they are legally allowed to — this is Texas, and Texas is inherently backward in its legal protections for marginalized communities.
But it’s laughable when businesses with judgmental policies turn around and complain about public backlash. If judgment is so upsetting, just wait until the afterlife, right?
Perhaps in the long term, this will all just feed into a martyr narrative for all the holy rollers at Roots Market. And they’ll probably love it.
This column reflects the opinions of the editorial board and not the Fort Worth Weekly. To submit a column, please email Editor Anthony Mariani at Anthony@FWWeekly.com. He will gently edit it for clarity and concision.
Let me see if I have this timeline right:
-Megan (Roots owner) joins Wandering Roots as a vendor.
-Megan starts her own market, using 2/3 of Wandering Roots name, sets up on the same street, and contacts Wandering Roots’ vendors to come work with her.
-Wandering Roots distances themselves from Roots because they believe them to be anti-gay and affiliated with Roots venue.
-Roots Markets contacts WR, does not disclose their identity even though they had vended with them for two years, and asks them to retract their social media post.
-In good faith, WR apologizes and removes the post. Issues a correction. Even goes so far as to tell people to support them.
-LuckyPotCo has a successful weekend with them. Sells candles. All is well.
-Roots discovers via social media that LuckyPotCo owner identifies LGBTQ. Tells her she can’t participate.
-Roots gets their ass handed to them by the neighborhood, and rightfully so, since they (Megan, specifically) obscured their personal identity and anti-gay agenda to open a market using a nearly identical name as Wandering Roots, in the same neighborhood, using the same vendors.
-Now Roots is crying because they were called out on it?
This was all so dishonest, it’s just crazy.
Schools and hospitals are obliged to attend same sex Roza or religion but not a business! Roots is in his right to elixir who wants to let participate in his business, this rather has already become a boycott for this business because of guilt and provoked by the other business that believes they are going to displace it and indeed that’s how they will be without knowing they are giving him more fame and you should not lend yourself to this type of comments because it could be offensive to Christian’s as well