Conservative neighbors toss dead rat on property gay couple’s restaurant amid ongoing dispute

Conservative neighbors were caught on security camera tossing a dead rat onto the property of a gay couple’s rural Virginia restaurant amid an escalation of a years-long spat.

William Waybourn and Craig Spaulding, both 76, operate the Front Porch Market and Grill, located adjacent to Mike and Melissa Washer’s financial firm that doubles as their home in The Plains, Virginia, The Washington Post reported. 

The dead vermin was found near the trash bins behind the restaurant, which flies a gay pride flag, last August. Correctly suspecting the culprit, the general manager reviewed the restaurant’s cameras which showed Mike Washer flinging the rat and then taking pictures of it on his phone in what she believes was an staged attempt to have the restaurant cited by health officials.

The Washers admitted that Mike threw the rat on their property, but claim that they have no interest in closing The Front Porch and that the rat was first dumped near their back door by restaurant employees and he was simply putting it back where it came from.

The incident was the culmination of an intensifying back and forth of complaints between the neighbors that began shortly after the Washers moved in back in 2019, according to The Washington Post.

The Washers argue that they are not being provocative, but are being unfairly harassed because they are conservative.

“We still feel like somebody put it [the rat] there to, excuse me, eff with us,” Melissa Washer told the paper. “Because they had done so many other little s—ty things to us.”

A year before the rat incident, the Washers began filing complaints about the restaurant’s trash with the local health department, according to WaPo. In response, the Front Porch owners filed a no-trespassing order against their neighbors.

The Washers then installed signs preventing customers from parking in spots the Washers own in the shared lot, confronting drivers who ignored the signs and even having their cars towed.

Their attorney then threatened legal action against the restaurant’s suppliers if their trucks continued to “trespass” in the lot and challenged the restaurant’s right to operate under its current permit.

Their challenge of the Front Porch’s permit was the Washers’ way of “questioning our town,” Melissa told the paper, because they “felt like the town was delivering the rules unfairly.”

“We, a conservative family, the Washers, are subjected to a set of rules that’s the by-the-book rules,” Mike said. “But if you’re not conservative, you are subjected to the town council letting you have special-use permits that accommodate whatever they want. That’s why we’re doing what we’re doing. It’s not right.”

The public dispute has split the small town of The Plains, with a population of about 250 people, WaPo reported.

Some residents fear the Washers could bankrupt the town with legal fees, hearings and paperwork. They worry the couple’s legal challenge could compromise The Plains’ bucolic charm, according to the newspaper.

The Washers said they feel that they are misunderstood.

Mike, 54, and Melissa Washer, 53, are conservatives and Christians who were in Washington D.C. the day of the Jan. 6 riots — although they told the Washington Post they did not enter the Capitol building and did not realize what happened until they got him.

They were anti-mask and anti-vaccine during the pandemic, and have put signs in their front yard that are pro-choice and pro-second amendment.

William Waybourn and Craig Spaulding met while working at the shuttered Dallas Times Herald in 1973, they told WaPo. They opened their restaurant in 2015, which immediately became a popular local destination, and married in 2020.

They first hoisted a pride flag on the restaurant patio in 2016 in the wake of shooting at an Orlando gay nightclub that killed 49 people.

Waybourn has been an LGBTQ rights activist for decades, rising to prominence as president of the Dallas Gay Alliance when it sued Parkland Memorial Hospital for failing to provide proper care for AIDS patients. He served as managing director of now-national Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, or GLAAD,and has owned newspapers for the gay community in New York, Washington, Atlanta and Houston.

While he’s faced his share of discrimination over the years, he said this situation with the Washers is different “because I don’t know what I’m fighting for.”

Waybourn said he finally barred the Washers from stepping on his property because he was fed up with the couple and their incessant complaints from their trash bins to disputes of wearing masks inside of the restaurant during the peak of the pandemic.

The Front Porch General manager told WaPo about one incident that still bothers Waybourn. After telling some of the restaurant employees Mike Washer was calling a truck to tow cars parked in his spaces, he told them: “I don’t know if that irritated him or what, but he was like [to one employee], ‘I like you, but the faggots you work for, I can’t stand.’”

“I haven’t been called a faggot in years,” Waybourn, holding back tears, told the newspaper.

Mike Washer denies the incident, saying he has gay friends and family members.

When The Washington Post asked Melissa whether they were trying to recreate their town into their version of a white, Christian America, she said she “can see where you’re coming from,” but denied that it is anything political.

“There is no politics in this. There is no race. There is no sexual orientation. … We like that this town is a mixture of all different kinds of people. We do,” she said.