Videos posted online showed the pub’s ransacked terrace and people locking themselves inside as a Soldier of God bad boy shouted threats and warnings.
"This is the place of Satan. It is promoting homosexuality. This is forbidden in the land of the Lord ... We are still using words with you and this is only the beginning ... We had warned you a hundred times," the bad boy says.
An Internal Security Forces patrol later arrived on the scene as the pub-goers were evacuated.
The incident sparked a heated debate among social media users in Leb
...an Iranian colony situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozeen flavors of Christians. It is the home of Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...Sheikh Hassan Merheb, a Sunni Moslem holy man who is a senior member of the Dar al-Fatwa religious authority, voiced support for the hardline Christian group on his X platform (formerly known as Twitter) account.
"A salutation from the heart to the men of Soldiers of God over what they did a while ago by prohibiting a sexual deviation party on one of Beirut’s streets," Merheb said.
"I said it before and I repeat it now: I stand by anyone who confronts this deviation and unnatural backwardness and I put my hand in their hands to defend our families and society against this degenerate and destructive thinking," the holy man added.
The journalist Mariam Seif meanwhile warned that "the areas that had been previously considered safe for nightlife are turning, thanks to Soldiers of God, into unsafe areas."
"It is in the interest of the residents of these areas, before anyone else, to confront this group before it gets stronger and controls all the details of their lives," Seif added.
The journalist Elsy Moufarrej for her part described Soldiers of God as "the Christian version of Hezbollah."
"They are acting as virtue police in Ashrafieh. Who tasked them with deciding what’s allowed and what’s not? Why are security forces not protecting citizens and their rights? If anyone gets harmed, the responsibility falls on the shoulders of the interior minister, security forces, the instigators and the ’virtue police’," Moufarrej added.
The group, which reportedly comprises around 100 members, had attacked alleged homosexual symbols and events in the past.
Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric has been recently soaring in Lebanon, one of the Middle East's more liberal countries.
Hezbollah chief Sayyed His Eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah
...The satrap of the Medes and the Persians in Leb...
has called for a boycott of rainbow products and said last month that gay people, "even if they do it once... are to be killed."