Restaurant manager to leave El Coyote over Prop. 8 controversy

BY CHRISTOPHER LISOTTA

Frontiers magazine learned Saturday Marjorie Christoffersen is stepping down as a manager at the Los Angeles restaurant El Coyote. Bill Schoeppner, a fellow manager at El Coyote who has been with the restaurant for 26 years, told Frontiers Christoffersen was also resigning as a member of El Coyote's board of directors.

“She no longer works here,” Schoeppner said on Saturday. “She just told me tonight.”

Christoffersen created a firestorm of controversy for the 77-year-old L.A. institution after local blogs broke the news she had donated $100 to the Yes on Proposition 8 campaign. Long a popular destination for the LGBT community for its cheap Mexican food and generous Margaritas, El Coyote found itself the target of boycotts and demonstrations after Christoffersen's donation went public. In a press conference hosted by the restaurant days after the news of the donation broke, Christoffersen tried to explain her donation did not have to do with animus for gay and lesbian people, but was instead tied to her Mormon faith. Christoffersen did not apologize for the donation and did not indicate she would support any No on 8 organization. Boycott organizers and demonstrators were not impressed, and have argued online and in the local news media that Christoffersen's support for the ban of same-sex marriage was reason to shun El Coyote.

Schoeppner said Christoffersen tended her resignation to her mother, Grace Salisbury, who is described on the El Coyote Web site as the “matriarch” of the restaurant. Salisbury's sister-in-law founded El Coyote in 1931.

“Everybody is kind of used to her walking around the restaurant with a water pitcher going from table to table to table,” Schoeppner said of Christofferson. “I guess that part is no longer going to exist.”