Street Preacher in T-Shirt Denouncing Homosexuality Claims Subway Employee Refused to Serve Him

PHOTO by Abhijeet Barak/Unsplash

A street preacher in Waunakee, Wisconsin, is claiming a Subway employee refused to serve him this week after he walked into the sandwich shop wearing a T-shirt with brightly colored text describing homosexuality as “sin.”

Rich Penkoski, the leader of an online organization called Warriors for Christ, explained to the Christian Post he is considering a lawsuit against the Connecticut-based restaurant chain after he was allegedly refused service, based on video footage circulating on X.

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In the video, the Subway staffer admitted she was denying service to Penkoski over “a personal matter.”

Penkoski said when he and the three men with him — each wearing a different T-shirt emblazoned with provocative wording about spiritual salvation, sexuality, and abortion — the employee at the quick-service eatery said she is “not serving these guys.”

“And there was a customer in front of us, and she said to him, ‘Are you with these gentlemen?'” Penkoski recalled. “He looked back at us and goes, ‘I’m not sure these are gentlemen.’ So I took out my phone and I told the pastor sitting next to me, I said, ‘They just refused service to us!'”

Leftist Karen refuses to serve Christians for wearing a Christian shirt. @SUBWAY Wanaukee Wisconsin. 608 268-1494 We can't refuse service to alphabet mafia, but they can refuse us? pic.twitter.com/WNzj6935nC

— Lexit (@LexitMovement1) July 17, 2024

The Subway worker apparently stated it was because of Penkoski’s T-shirt that she denied him service. The shirt bore the words, “Homo sex is sin,” with a reference to Romans 1 beneath the neon yellow lettering.

The T-shirt was likely a reference to Romans 1:24-27, in which the Apostle Paul wrote:

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

(NIV)

In a further statement, Penkoski said the way he was treated at the Subway restaurant highlights a double standard that exists in modern American culture, referring specifically to Christians who hold biblical views on sexuality, which is that sexual expression is reserved for one man and one woman within the confines of marriage.

“If the shoe were on the other foot, if somebody walked in and said, ‘Oh, I’m gay or whatever,’ and I said, ‘Nope, I’m not serving you,’ this would be all over the place, and I’d be fired, or I’d be getting sued,” he argued. “But these LGBT people are so emboldened, that they think, just because they’re either gay or gay allies, they can say and do whatever they want.”

“If they really want equality,” he added, “then they should be OK with me suing them the same way they sue us.”

The man, who traveled to Milwaukee to preach outside the Republican National Convention this week, said he has spoken to an attorney about the potential of taking legal action against Subway. He believes the establishment violated his civil rights.

CBN News has reached out to Subway and Penkoski for additional comment.

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