By Police1 Staff
WASHINGTON — An LGBTQ sports bar in Washington D.C. faced backlash after flying a Blue Lives Matter flag.
The Nellie Sports Bar, a popular LGBTQ bar, said it raised the flag for LGBTQ officers attending a meeting “in a welcoming space,” WTTG reports.
The move sparked outcry from members of the LGBTQ community, who argued that the flag was an opposing movement to Black Lives Matter. One woman said the bar is “complicit and even celebrating the murder of black people by police.”
The bar released a statement following the criticism, saying it “promptly removed” the flag and didn’t mean “to state that we are opposed to the Black Lives Matter movement.”
“We now understand that flying this flag -- at this point in time, in particular -- was at best tone deaf, and at worst offensive. We sincerely apologize to our customers and our neighbors for this egregious mistake, and want to assure you that this flag will never fly at Nellie’s again. What it represents to you is not what we want to represent, or what we want our bar to be,” the bar said in a statement.