El Compadre Restaurant Fires Homophobic Manager After Viral Incident

Earlier this week, actor Drew Droege had a nice date interrupted by homophobic rhetoric from the manager on duty at Echo Park's El Compadre Mexican restaurant.

The restaurant took to Instagram to respond, writing: "We want to sincerely apologize for the actions of our manager the night of December 12. This is not representative of our core values at El Compadre, and we wanted to let our customers know that the manager has been terminated."

They carried on assuring that, having been in business nearly 50 years, they "accept, appreciate and value every customer that walks through our doors, and this behavior will never be tolerated in our establishment. We take pride in the diversity of our customers who have supported and enjoyed our family recipes handed down from generation to generation -- and we are ashamed that this happened."

To recap, Droege and his date had paid their bill and were finishing their drinks while they waited to catch a show downtown. After sharing a kiss with his date, the manager interrupted them and told them they were in a family restaurant and he didn't "care if you're the President of the United States, we don't allow your behavior here."

While reasserting that they are a family restaurant, El Compadre believes anyone coming into the restaurant is equivalent to coming into their home. "In our home," the post reads, "we believe in love and equality, and the fact that one of our employees made someone feel unsafe is not acceptable to us."

After expressing deep regret, the restaurant ended the post with a show of commitment to all customers "regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, disability, or status."

The comments were met with an outpouring of support, with most people agreeing with the decision and the way the restaurant responded. The final response comes after their initial request to "give [the restaurant] time to seek out what happened, gather more information, and take appropriate action."

Once again, love wins.

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