Posted on 09/30/2014 4:41:46 AM PDT by Timber Rattler
A bakery owner in Oregon broke down in tears while discussing the fallout of her and her husband’s decision not to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple on the basis of their Christian beliefs.
Earlier this year, the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries found “substantial evidence” that Aaron and Melissa Klein, owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa, discriminated against the lesbian couple.
Oregon bakery owners face a $150,000 discrimination fine for not baking a wedding cake for lesbians.
They now face a fine in excess of $150,000.
(snip)
The ordeal started in February 2013, when Rachel Cryer and Laurel Bowman asked the bakery owners to design a wedding cake for their same-sex commitment ceremony.
At the time, Oregon defined marriage as the union between one man and one woman; voters overwhelmingly approved the constitutional amendment in 2004.
Aaron told The Daily Signal he thought he was “well within” his legal rights to decline the service, citing his traditional beliefs that a marriage is between a man and a woman.
In January 2014, the Kleins were charged with violating Oregon’s Equality Act of 2007, a law that protects the rights of the LGBT community.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailysignal.com ...
Though, I *do* take pride in my work, and doubt that I'd take that route if I were these bakers.
What I don't understand is why anyone in their right mind would eat something that was prepared for them under duress.
That's an interesting point, which highlights the challenge of balancing the right to free expression of individual viewpoints and lifestyles. There is an ongoing trend, sponsored by the left, to reduce the extent to which anyone can express themselves in a commercial context. Taking your point of view further, what basis is there for anyone in commerce to express their point of view? Even the person performing the ceremony, if its a civil ceremony is just providing a service. And that same logic can be applied to other situations too. What business is it to the owner of a motel why the sketchy looking couple want to rent a room? Or the bartender serving drinks - he's just providing a commodity too. Or the firearms dealer selling handguns. Or the clerk in a convenience store selling cigarettes.
Of course in the latter cases the government does expect the business owner to act as an agent of society and enforce a set of rules. And in many other ways the government expects businesses to act as agents of the government, collecting taxes, withholding funds from employees, enforcing immigration laws etc. So government is very happy to have businesses make all kinds of discriminatory choices, like denying cigarettes to an under-age person, or not hiring someone without the proper visa, as long as the government gets to determine what the business can and can't do.
Of course when the individuals who run a business would like to determine what they do on their own, that's a different story. In the case of LGBT activists religious businesses are frequently targeted for what can only be described as sting operations. Interestingly, religious groups do not seem to make the same kinds of efforts. How often have you heard of, for example, Christian married couples going in large groups to socialize at ordinarily gay bars, thereby causing the same kind of refusal of service that the LGBT activists create when they seek to have a gay wedding, for example, at a Catholic oriented resort.
I also think that the same government which supports legal action against a bakery which refused service based on their religious views would be entirely supportive of another bakery that refused, for instance, to provide a cake with racist slogans on it for some other kind of event. Thus the real issue ends up being what kind of expression is permitted, and how political power is used to create protected groups.
go away pharisee. You could not be more wrong. Jesus hung out with sinners and criticized the phony purists of his day.
If the sandal fits.....
Gun owners are not protected with special provisions. They aren’t “speshul”
“Thus the real issue ends up being what kind of expression is permitted, and how political power is used to create protected groups.” ... You have stopped one or two layers too soon. The fundamental issue is who is being served by such oligarchical tyranny? Whom do we focus upon as the real demons at the heart of this campaign to destroy the American Republic as founded?
I wouldn’t put anything in the cake but I would make them wonder what is in their cake. I wouldn’t allow these scumbags to ruin me financially. I would pay a homeless drunk to come in and make their cake. The dirty drunk would be their baker.
Please tell me you’re joking.
not about anything....please tell me what point you are concerned with? I’m pretty sure you don’t have a case....
Well you were so anxious to use a lot of words you conflated a few of my ideas. First, I indicate that the government should have no right to tell a business who they must cater to. Thus, a bakery should be able to turn down whoever they want to.
And yes, a business should be able to be reflective of their views - but that doesn’t mean it’s smart to always do so. That’s my only point. They’ve accomplished zip zero nada - except maybe bankruptcy on their part. That’s not, as the Bible says, acting “wise as serpents and gentle as doves.” To do so, would have been to bake the dykes the best cake they could, and maybe charged a little premium on it. Wise as serpents. Gentle as doves. And 150 grand to the good.
You’re advocating moral cowardice, plain and simple. Not only would your approach encourage cowardice in people, but it would encourage greater tyranny in the government. Government overreach is ONLY hindered by citizens pushing back. Acquiescing, even for purely pragmatic reasons, means that you accept the overreach as the new limit. That is, of course, until the next, further overreach.
I guess you never heard of debt collectors, credit ratings, liens, and interstate cooperation in these matters, eh?
Just try that and see what happens.
So a business should be the conscience for their customer base? Really? That's absurd. How many wedding cakes have they baked for known philanderers and certainly for non virgins - and yet used lily white? Where does it end?
Should the landscaper that mows the yard of the venue for the wedding refuse to mow that week? Should the janitorial crew refuse to clean up? Should the insurance company cancel? Seriously, where does it stop?
And speaking of conscience - what about employees who will lose their jobs if the bakery closes? What about anyone holding any debt for the business? What about the bakeries landlord? No conscience for costing these people problems?
NO I"M NOT....don't be so stupid it angers me......sheesh. You're advocating moral foolishness and phony martyrdom.
My point is there is NO MORALITY for the bakery or the florists or the landscaper or the janitor or any other number of services here. To the pastor or whoever performs it? YES, that's a moral issue. For anyone who sings or plays music or otherwise participates in the service? YES, that's a moral issue. For anyone who attends the same thing.....
BUT everybody else should get over themselves. Wise as serpents......this was not wise.
I'll demonstrate your absurdity here...and that point above is absurdity. Your clever use of sodomy to over compensate is really interesting, but I'll leave that one alone.
By your ridiculous standards, baking for non virgins, for cheaters, for folks who are living together before marrying, for daughters of unscrupulous businessmen, etc.....is just as much of a scandal. The Bible does not grade sin on a curve. This baker sins. Every customer he or she has ever had sins. Period.
Did Our Lord take Zaccheus's money? "Hey! He just needs to make a living right!"? Did He sell the harlot some jewelry, direct some "business" her way? He hung out with sinners to call them to repentance, not to profit off their sin.
I’m thinking very strategically - and I just do not accept the premise that certain parties to a wedding have any moral relationship to that event - just as some parties really do. Pastor or whoever is administrating? YES. Sing, or music, or flower girl? YES. Attendee? Yes.
Everyone else? NO. Not relevant.
You are trying to make a stretch that just does not reach. I’ve already condemned any government entity that would deny the baker’s rights -and acknowledged the baker’s rights - but again, it is infantile to think that you can, or should, stand on every right in every situation. That’s absurd. That is NOT AT ALL STRATEGIC. There was a huge tactical loss here and not a dadburned thing accomplished strategically. In fact, probably some harm.
He wasn’t in those businesses - so your analogy is an epic fail. The baker is running a for profit business, not a ministry. Epic fail two
Nice try. Not really.
No. You can bake a cake for two fornicators that has nothing to with their fornication, or two unscrupulous businessmen that has nothing to with their theft. Because THOSE cakes are not honoring the SIN, they are honoring something else.
The equivalent here is if people came to you and said "bake me a fornication cake", or a "cheater cake", or a "fraud cake".
And why are you mocking the reference to sodomy? What the heck else is a "gay wedding" celebrating ?
St Thomas More was a very successful lawyer who was in the court of Henry VIII. He refused to recognize the king's marriage changes (so to speak), lost his post, came to financial ruin (and bringing his family to ruin along with him) and was beheaded (dying as a Catholic martyr). All of this because while others were able to 'go along' and support Henry's claims/beliefs, More's conscience wouldn't let him. He condemned none of his peers for their choices.
I see it exactly the same.
From the Second Vatican Council: Deep within their conscience human persons discover a law which they have not laid upon themselves but which they must obey. Its voice, ever calling them to love and to do what is good and avoid evil, tells them inwardly at the right moment: do this, shun that. For human persons have in their hearts a law inscribed by God... the more a correct conscience prevails, the more do persons and groups turn aside from blind choice and try to be guided by the objective standards of moral conduct. Yet it often happens that conscience goes astray through ignorance which it is unable to avoid, without thereby losing its dignity. This cannot be said of the person who takes little trouble to find out what is true and good, or when conscience is by degrees almost blinded through the habit of committing sin. - Second Vatican Council, The Church in the Modern World (1965), §§27
I doubt that non-Catholic Christians have it written out in such a manner somewhere, but I believe that the concept is there. Such acts of conscience usually entail serious sacrifice. It seems evident to me that these Christians are following their consciences and feel that their participation in the wedding would be active cooperation with a moral evil.
Are they right? I don't know - again I am more inclined to agree with you. But conscience is personal between God and Man so IMO supporting them is what Christians should do.
Gay’s cause bankruptcy must be punished.
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