Coffee Shop Owner Removes Pride Display, And Now Locals Taste Something Bitter
As the Portland café enforces a flag ban, some staff and customers say the space no longer feels like home.
In Portland, Oregon’s St. Johns neighborhood, a coffee shop is facing backlash after its owner removed Pride flags that employees had displayed for Pride Month. The decision has sparked criticism from customers and staff, with some viewing it as part of a broader debate about how businesses handle expressions of identity in community spaces.
Austen Tanner, the owner of Cathedral Coffee, insists his decision to remove the flags has nothing to do with LGBTQ+ visibility. In comments to local station KATU, he pointed to Cathedral’s “long-standing” policy banning the display of any political, religious, or social symbols inside the shop.
“Pick a flag,” Tanner said. “It’s never going to be up in a Cathedral Coffee location.”
Employees were reportedly given documents outlining the policy and asked to sign off on the company’s approach, which Tanner says is about maintaining a “neutral” space where everyone feels comfortable.
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But to many in the community, neutrality isn’t what’s coming across. Instead, the policy is being seen as a way to erase a symbol that, for decades, has represented safety, acceptance, and visibility for LGBTQ+ people.
“When I heard [about the removal], I really accepted there’s no place for that in our community as far as I’m concerned,” Kylie Forslund, a longtime customer who says she won’t be returning, told KATU.
“I think that they need to know that this is the community that they’ve moved into and that they’ve decided to put their business in and that this kind of behavior is not going to be tolerated,” she added.
Several former employees have left Cathedral over the decision, no longer feeling aligned with a workplace that won’t allow the Pride flag to be part of its environment during Pride Month.
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The local controversy echoes a growing trend across the U.S., where businesses, schools, and lawmakers have adopted “no flags” or “neutrality” policies. LGBTQ+ advocates argue that such rules often disproportionately target Pride flags while pretending to apply universally. They view this approach as a coded form of marginalization that conceals exclusion in the guise of fairness. Just last month, Salt Lake City and Boise adopted Pride flags as official city emblems after new state laws banned non-governmental flags from being flown at public schools, government offices, and universities.
In a city like Portland, where Pride flags fly from porches year-round, the removal of such symbols in a neighborhood café can hit a particularly sour note. Residents have responded by plastering Pride flags and messages of allyship around Cathedral.
Tanner continues to maintain that the ban is not discriminatory. Claims that he is targeting the LGBTQ+ community are “totally false,” he said. Yet the impact of the decision, not just the intent, is what many in the community are focused on.
