WINDSOR, ONT. -- One local woman is calling on more education within Windsor-Essex after what she described as a simple request was shockingly refused.
Brittany Leroux turned to T. Bear’s Creamery on Tecumseh Road East, hoping they could create an ice cream cake that featured her husband’s favourite drag queen, Jimbo, from the show RuPaul's Drag Race.
“When I called to order I first talked to the female and I said I’d like to order a cake and the picture I’d like to put on it is a picture of a drag queen and she said, ‘what is that? Like a transvestite?’ And I said ‘no it’s a man who dresses up as a woman and performs, does anything, does stuff most people can’t do at all,” Leroux told CTV News.
After explaining what a drag queen is to a staff member, Leroux claims she was refused service.
“And she said we don’t do stuff like that here. I hung up the phone and I was shocked,” she says.
Leroux says she took some time to calm down and decided to call back to speak to a manager.
“I tried to ask him why the cake was refused and that’s when I started recording him and that’s when he started to group in drag queen with pedophiles,” she says. “That’s what blew my mind.”
“That was absolutely shocking I don’t understand how can you compare the two things. How can you compare criminals with beams of light? That’s what drag queens are to me they’re beams of light.”
“I was just kind of shocked and amazed of being what was going on and how he kind of refused and being homophobic which is not right and not acceptable,” Leroux’s husband John Reh says.
The ice cream shop is open on Sundays, and CTV News spoke with an employee who says she would pass along contact information to management, but as of newstime they have not commented.
“This type of hate and bigotry has no place in our Windsor community. Over the past several months, we have seen a sharp increase in the number of hate crimes that have taken place,” a news release from Trans Wellness says. “When microaggressions, harassment, and inappropriate conduct are not called out, it is one step closer to a hate crime.”
“My main thing is for him to be educated,” Leroux says. “I think it’s a lack of education is what causes hate in this world.”
She says she is not looking for an apology for herself, but for the LGBTQ+ community.
“Just to love everybody and be accepting and understanding,” Reh says. “When it comes down to it everyone is the same. Everyone needs friendship and companionship.”
