(The Lion) — A suburb about 10 miles south of downtown Seattle canceled a ‘Coffee with a Cop’ meeting after LGBTQ activists complained because the shop owner is a Christian pastor.

The meeting was scheduled to allow members of the community to meet police in an informal setting to get to know them more as people.

The pastor is well known in the community, doing outreach among prostitutes, drug dealers, and strippers endemic to the area.

Radio host Jason Rantz, of local 770 KTTH Seattle, reported on the cancellation.

In a pretzel-worded statement, the city of Shoreline, Washington, canceled the community event, at Pilgrim Coffee, in the Northgate area of the Seattle suburbs, oddly citing the “values” the coffee shop “may or may not hold.”

“We want to address the current conversation (and negative feedback) surrounding Shoreline Police Department’s Coffee with a Cop event originally scheduled for March 26, 2025,” said Shoreline City Hall on Facebook. “The event has been canceled. It was neither the departments, nor the City’s, intent to make any community member feel unwelcome based on the selection of the event venue and the values that the venue may or may not hold.”

The city then promised next time itwill screen out Christian venues prior to selecting a location.

“When planning future events, we will be more intentional with our venue selection,” said the city’s announcement, noting that they want to create a “a thriving city that is Welcoming to All.”

Critics may well wonder if it is really welcoming to Christians.

In a later statement to KTTH, the city said they’d hold meet-a-cop coffees at city properties in the future to avoid the “political overlay.”

In a reply, Pilgrim Coffee’s owner, Keith Carpenter, said he was disappointed by the cancelation, mostly because of attacks on him that make assumptions about his Christian beliefs.

Carpenter said he believes in an America where people can be kind to each other even when having different beliefs.

“I can confirm that no matter what you have said to me in these comments, or on Reddit and Nextdoor, if you were in trouble in some way, I would be there to help you,” he added. “Even those of you who posted those, kind of mean things, without ever meeting me: I can guarantee, if you needed a free cup of coffee, I would give it to you. If you need a gallon of gas for your car, I would give it to you. If you need a place to stay, I would help you find it. If you are in need, I would find a way to help.”

The announcement on Facebook by the city generated 123 comments, mostly thanking Shoreline for canceling the event. Just two comments after Carpenter posted his reply, the city turned off commenting, saying, “We appreciate everyone’s comments and feedback, but we have decided to turn the comments off for this post at this time.”

Appearing on the Rantz radio show, Carpenter said that his coffee shop doesn’t know or care about people’s sexual or political beliefs.

“We serve anybody who walks in the door. I don’t even know [if they’re LGBTQ]. We don’t ask questions. So, it’s like a non-starter for us, because nobody’s asking questions at the door,” he told Rantz. “Anybody who walks in that space will get the same exact beautiful, generous, generously hospitable treatment. And probably the best cup [of coffee] they’ll have all month or all year.”

That doesn’t mean that the shop owner shies away from his Christian beliefs.

Carpenter, who is the pastor at Epic Life Church, works with outreach along Seattle’s Aurora Avenue, known for its prostitution trade, according to KTTH.

Pilgrim Coffee is also nearby.

Seattle Met, a local culture magazine, named Pilgrim Coffee one of the best coffee shops in Seattle, a city that made coffee shops an artform.

Met said that the shop has both great coffee and is a great place to hang out in the unlikely Aurora Avenue area.

“You’re likely to find banquettes and lengthy tables filled with families enjoying the robust sandwich menu, young professionals busy at their laptops, and older regulars chatting away with the barista as they pull a pristine americano,” said the magazine’s online article about the shop.

Pilgrim does feature the Carpenters’ journey of faith that led them from Minnesota, where they owned a coffee truck, to Seattle, where they own a coffee shop and founded a church “among marijuana, strip clubs” and prostitutes.

But one has to dig a bit on the website to find that story.

On the website leading to their faith story, the coffee company simply notes that Pilgrim is a coffee shop “where dogs pull their owners through our open doors, where little ones roam free and safe, and where coffee tastes better because our neighbors are known.”