The Christian owners of a Gresham, Oregon bakery have been forced to close their bakery after being targeted by radical gays for their refusal to bake a wedding cake for a same sex marriage. ‘Sweet Cakes by Melissa’ will go underground instead. According to Willamette Week, the business will now become an at-home business.
This is what Christian persecution looks like.
Whether you support same sex marriage or not, the fact that a company should be forced to endorse a marriage that runs counter to their religious beliefs is an affront to the free exercise of religion. Is cake-making a public accommodation? Sweet Cakes by Melissa is run by a Christian couple who run their business on Christian values.
Willamette Week claims they don’t.
To test out which religious convictions would cause the shop to refuse business, Willamette Week called up the shop and asked them to make cakes for divorce, out-of-wedlock children, human stem cell research and a pagan solstice (with a pentacle design requested for the cake). All requests were responded to positively, with price quotes.
Perhaps the newspaper reporter should have come into the shop and tried to order the cake as the same sex couple did. Did Sweet Cakes by Melissa decorate the cakes? No. Did they take the order? No.
I’m not in support of discrimination. I’m in support of Christians not being bullied for their beliefs.
The Oregonian reports the lesbian couple has filed a complaint with the State,
Oregon’s Bureau of Labor and Industries‘ civil rights division will investigate to determine if the business violated the Oregon Equality Act of 2007, which protects the rights of gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgender people in employment, housing and public accommodations.
Sweet Cakes owners say they and their vendors have been threatened according to the Washington Times,
The Kleins cited their Christian beliefs of traditional marriage when they turned down that business gig, The Blaze reported. But the lesbian couple filed a complaint with the state, accusing the shop owners of discrimination.
Since, they’ve been hounded by vicious telephone calls and emails.
Some of those threats were shocking. One emailer wished for the couple’s children to fall ill. Another expressed hope that Mr. Klein should be shot and even raped, The Blaze reported.
And yet another wrote: “Here’s hoping you go out of business, you bigot.”
The couple said on top of that, their vendors were “badgered and harassed” into stopping all associations with the bakery.
This is what State supported “tolerance” looks like.
Somewhere there’s a balance of values. This isn’t it.
