Potterville bar under fire for anti-LGBTQ social media posts

TUESDAY, April 18 — A Potterville bar faces protests and backlash after anti-LGBTQ posts appeared on the business’s Facebook page. 

The page has since been deleted, but WLNS reported that a dozen Potterville residents protested last night. The report included copies of the posts that used gay slurs and condemned anal sex. After deleting the posts, the business claimed Monday morning that it had been hacked. 

But Potterville residents said they have no doubt that manager John Devine was behind the posts. And WLNS reporter Nate Salazer reported Devine admitted to making the posts in an off-camera interview Monday. 

Residents want Devine gone, they told WLNS. 

Potterville is in Eaton County off Interstate 69 between Lansing and Charlotte.

This is not the first time Devine’s behavior has come under fire. In 2020, the Michigan Liquor Control Commission suspended the liquor license of Charlie’s Bar and Grille for violating pandemic orders. Devine claimed in communications with then State Sen. Tom Barrett and in an interview with WLNS that commission investigator  had appeared as a hungry, lonely man. 

But the agent’s body camera video, shown in an administrative hearing revealed a very different story. 

The video revealed that eight adults were unmasked, eating food and being served alcohol in violation of the state’s pandemic emergency orders from Michigan Department of Health and Human Services Director Robert Gordon. Those orders prohibit indoor dining and alcohol service in an effort to stop the spread of COVID-19.  

Liquor Control spokeswoman Jeannie Vogel denied that the investigator misled staff at the bar.  “The accusations are false that the investigator posed as a poor, hungry, person in need,” she wrote in an email.  Video that City Pulse and Michigan Advance obtained from the Potterville Police Department showed Deinve abusing an LCC employee for pulling the license. The video  showed Devine calling the agent a “communist motherfucker” and a “traitor.” 

He was ordered to write an apology to the investigator by the administrative law judge, who called his behavior “extremely disturbing and disappointing.” He later called Devine’s behavior “reprehensible.” The bar lost its license for 30 days and was ordered to pay a $600 fine for violating pandemic orders and the abuse heaped on the agent from the Commission.