Jamie Sanchez has felt a calling to serve the homeless ever since he was a child. But he never imagined that following that calling would lead to him being labeled a bigot.
“It was really strange, actually, because we all of a sudden started getting like messages on Instagram about how we hate gay people and just like random comments like that,” Sanchez told Fox News Digital. “And come to find out there was like an organized group ready to protest the opening of our café before we even open. We did some digging, and we found out it was strictly because we were Christian.”
Sanchez is the owner of The Drip Café in Denver, located in the Art District on Santa Fe Drive. He also runs a homeless ministry called “Recycle God’s Love,” that he started in 2012 with his late wife, Carolyn, who died from cancer in 2018.
What began as a small group offering Bible studies and meals to the homeless has grown into a widespread community initiative, involving churches, local businesses, and volunteers, providing hundreds of people with everything from haircuts to food to clothing and housing.
“Over the years, it has just grown into just an amazing community of believers and people who really have a heart to help people who are in need and to do it selflessly,” Sanchez told Fox News Digital.
In 2022, Sanchez took the ministry a step further by launching “Project Revive,” a faith-based initiative designed to support homeless individuals seeking to rebuild their lives. The program helps the homeless access housing, transportation, identification, addiction counseling, and jobs — grounded in Christian discipleship.
As part of this mission, Sanchez opened The Drip Café the next year. It’s a regular coffee shop that also hires and mentors individuals who have completed the ministry’s program, and are sober and ready to reintegrate into the workforce.
“We’ve had a few people go through the project so far, and it’s been very successful,” he said.
However, even before The Drip Café opened its doors, Sanchez says they began receiving social media messages accusing the café of being anti-gay. On the opening day, protesters, organized by a local group called the Denver Communists, held signs and passed out flyers accusing the coffee shop of being run by a “right-wing church” that hated those in the LGBTQ community.
“I was in shock,” Sanchez recalled. “Our whole purpose opening the café was to serve the homeless community and help people get off the street, change their lives. And here we got a group who just hates us because we’re doing that, and we’re Christian.”
The group objected to Recycle God’s Love calling homosexuality a sin in its beliefs section on its website.
They protested outside the café every weekend initially. Now, about 10–20 people protest outside their shop every first Friday of the month during the area’s art walk event.
Despite attempts to engage with them peacefully, Sanchez says he’s been met mostly with silence or shouting.
He said protesters followed two elderly women into the store one time and screamed at a blind Christian DJ on another occasion.
“Here’s this group trying to act inclusive, and they are harassing a Black blind guy in front of my café because he’s Christian,” he said.
His property has been vandalized, windows broken and “Keep Santa Fe Gay” stickers have been left on windows and mirrors. Recently, a spray-painted image of a KKK member hanging was left on the café’s front door.
The Christian shop owner maintains he harbors no hatred toward the protesters. He sees the backlash as part of a spiritual battle. After finding no help from local authorities, he and his team chose to hold live worship music in the café every first Friday to help “drown out” the commotion outside.
“I love them even though they don’t believe me and I’ve never shown anything but love to them and that’s why the only pictures they have of me is praying for them,” he told Fox News Digital. “I understand that they feel like they are having an identity crisis, and they might feel hopeless and lost and the only way to rectify that feeling is through the Son of God who is Jesus Christ.”
The Denver Communists told Fox News Digital they were not protesting the café strictly because it is Christian, but because of its religious beliefs on sexuality.
“There are plenty of Christian denominations that don’t share their bigoted view, such as the ELCA [Evangelical Lutheran Church in America] and we’ve been joined by pastors and many Christians in our protests. Since then Drip has doubled down on its homophobic position,” a spokesperson for the group said. “Jamie and his bigoted coffee shop don’t have a monopoly on Christianity, but he sure is willing to try and profit off of it.”
The communists say they view the protests as part of a “broader struggle” against forces like the Trump administration, which they say is attacking LGBTQ+ rights.
“We may not succeed in running the Drip out of town before the end of its lease, but that is ultimately irrelevant. The protests against the hate-café are serving as a training ground for new queer-rights activists, the message of queer liberation is being spread, and our ultimate victory, while delayed, is inevitable,” the group wrote in a blog post shared with Fox News Digital.
The group also claimed Sanchez was affiliated with neo-Nazis and said they’d been subjected to slurs and threats by staff, which Sanchez adamantly denied. He disavowed any hate shown to the protesters by others outside his café and claimed the communists had spread lies about him and his shop.
“The communists have told me I’m not welcome, told me to kill myself, and my response is, ‘I love you, and you are welcome to come in peacefully.’ We have offered them free coffee and food on cold days,” he told Fox News Digital. “It’s very silly of them to say I am part of a Nazi group, considering I am a brown-skinned Hispanic.”
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