Posted on 04/27/2015 7:53:31 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Americans who choose to live their lives according to conservative Christian values continue to pay a political and social price for it even as gay marriage enjoys unprecedented acceptance.
An Oregon bakery that in January of 2013 refused to bake a cake for a lesbian couple’s wedding is only the latest casualty in the culture war over same-sex marriage — a war that Christians are clearly losing.
Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer sued Aaron and Melissa Klein of Sweet Cakes by Melissa. This forced the shop to close its doors in September of 2013 after months of hate mail and plummeting revenues.
Much like the owners of Memories Pizza experienced when a clerk merely answered a hypothetical question about catering to a SSM, Sweet Cakes by Melissa received death threats and rape threats following its decision not to bake a wedding cake for the lesbian couple.
According to The Blaze, which saw some of the hate mail received by the bakers, one read: ‘You stupid bible-thumping, hypocritical b**ch. I hope your kids get really, really, sick and you go out of business,’ and another said: ‘Here’s hoping you go out of business, you bigot. Enjoy hell.’
The couple told the news service their customers had been ‘badgered and harassed’ not to do business with the bakery and subsequently, orders for wedding cakes this summer were significantly lower than usual.
Some clients even cancelled existing orders because of the public debacle, the Blaze said.
An Oregon administrative law judge recommended Friday that Sweet Cakes by Melissa be fined $135,000 in damages for the emotional suffering of the lesbian couple.
“[T]he forum concludes that $75,000 and $60,000, are appropriate awards to compensate [the same-sex couple] for the emotional suffering they experienced,” wrote Alan McCullough, administrative law judge for Oregon’s Bureau of Labor and Industries in his proposed order.
The town of Gresham, Oregon, incidentally, has a population of over 100,000 and has many good bakeries to choose from.
Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer, however, claimed they felt ”mentally raped” when they were denied a wedding cake by one bakery, and listed 88 symptoms of emotional distress that they suffered.
Examples of symptoms include “acute loss of confidence,” “doubt,” “excessive sleep,” “felt mentally raped, dirty and shameful,” “high blood pressure,” “impaired digestion,” “loss of appetite,” “migraine headaches,” “pale and sick at home after work,” “resumption of smoking habit,” “shock” “stunned,” “surprise,” “uncertainty,” “weight gain” and “worry.”
Given the 88 symptoms of emotional distress these ladies felt, it is clear that it had never occurred to either one of them that not everyone they may encounter in life is as thrilled about same sex marriage as they are. They had apparently gone through their entire adult lives unaware of the fact that there are people out there who have political and/or religious views on marriage that differ from their own. So it was a cruel shock to their poor, delicate systems when they came face to face with the abominable Kleins and their unfashionable opinions.
The Kleins said, “No, we’d rather not bake a cake for something we find morally objectionable.” Which is pretty harsh, but perhaps not as harsh as “you stupid bible-thumping, hypocritical b**ch” and “enjoy hell.”
Because the family has already shuttered the business, the fines will have to be paid from them personally and could potentially bankrupt the family. Talk about “emotional distress.”
A GoFundMe page was set up to help the Klein family, but after raising more than $109,000 toward their $150,000 goal the website took it down.
The website GoFundMe said in a statement Saturday that it took down the page because the campaign violated the policy against raising money “in defense of formal charges of heinous crimes, including violent, hateful, or sexual acts.”
“The campaign entitled ‘Sweet Cakes by Melissa‘ involves formal charges. As such, our team has determined that it was in violation of GoFundMe’s Terms & Conditions,” said GoFundMe in an email statement.
“The money raised thus far will still be made available for withdrawal,” said GoFundMe.
According to the Washington Times, the effort to quash the GoFundMe page was led by Lisa Watson of Oregon on Facebook.
“Lisa Watson of Cupcake Jones started her own campaign to contact GoFundMe and report the campaign as being in violation of their terms of service,” said the website GoLocalPDX in a Saturday post.
“Watson’s own post on Facebook stated, ‘this business has been found GUILTY OF DISCRIMINATION and is being allowed to fundraise to pay their penalty. The gofundme terms of service address hate speech, bigotry, criminal activity, and sexism among other things in their campaign … The amount of money they have raised in a matter of a few hours by thousands of anonymous cowards is disgusting,’” said the website.
In a Saturday post on her Facebook page, Ms. Watson said, “I can’t believe we just did that,” while Brent J. Blackwell commented, “I complained three times and got my family in on it too!”
“Seriously in tears! Good work Watson and everyone who spoke up!” said Ryan Wayman in a comment on her page.
Those were tears of *joy* Ryan was feeling because the internet outrage mob he was part of had denied the Kleins a means to pay their fine and avoid financial ruin. The couple, who have five children, have been struggling to make ends meet ever since they had to close their shop due to the controversy.
Meanwhile, RedState reported that GoFundMe “has no problem raising money for legal funds, as long as it’s not for Christians.”
Aldo Alvarez was charged with burglary with assault and battery on a law enforcement officer after allegedly attacking Palm Beach County Sheriff’s deputy Joshua McGehee. McGeheee shot Alvarez, and GoFundMe hasn’t taken down Alvarez’s account.
Neither have they taken down the hundreds of legal defense fund accounts, many of the beneficiaries of which face “formal charges of heinous crimes, including violent, hateful, or sexual acts.”
Nope, only the Kleins, who are accused of violating the Gaystapo’s “made to care” rules, have been stripped of their GoFundMe account.
Fortunately, Rev. Franklin Graham’s Christian humanitarian organization, Samaritan’s Purse, stepped in to help the Kleins raise money.
“They have taken a stand for the Word of God, and they should not have to stand alone,” Graham said. “I believe that Christians across our nation will rally around Aaron and Melissa and their five children.
“Please pray for Aaron and Melissa, and pray for our nation. When our judges are punishing Christians for practicing what they believe, that’s persecution, plain and simple.”
“Seriously in tears! Good work Watson and everyone who spoke up!” said Ryan Wayman in a comment on her page.
Burn the witch, burn the witch!
Extremely difficult and extremely expensive. The legal fees alone to set it up and avoid any number of issues, not the least of which is the SEC and the IRS, would be astronomical.
The actual setting up of the site is simple, cheap, and about 5% of the process.
I was questioning gofundme’s ethics
These fine people were Targeted specifically ..due to their Christian Faith!
Pray the Supreme Court does the right thing this week.
This is what the Nazis did to the Jews. Force their businesses to close, put them out of business, fire them from their jobs, make it so they can’t support their families. All under the appropriate set of laws to make it seem legal.
Then they passed laws to make the Jews themselves illegal, which allowed for the imprisonment and death of “undesirables.”
Welcome to “post-Christian” America.
Well God still says.
Romans 1:..
22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools.. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
28 Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy.
Note also that Romans 1:32 points out that those who approve of such conduct are just as guilty as those who engage in it.
Lev 18:22 “You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination....
25‘For the land has become defiled, therefore I have brought its punishment upon it, so the land has spewed out its inhabitants.”
ping
Is there any legal way for the Kleins to sue the owner of Cupcakes for emotional distress, as well as every other anti-Christian bigot who harassed them and their customers? We need to start turning the tables on them, both through the legal system and the political system. Another good place to focus would be on college campuses. Have our young Conservatives, start protesting for the colleges to recognize their positions. Religious students must feel”unsafe” or “offended” by college policies designed to shut them up.
Actually, there are other bakeries that will provide the service, but which will also benefit financially from having a competitor driven out of business.
I have a hard time believing that “Cupcake Jones” was motivated more by a sense of humanistic altruism than pragmatic business ruthlessness in going after these Christians.
As a general rule rank and file customers won’t patronize a business that is involved in any sort of controversy. Its just not worth the hassle. Staging (legally, with proper permits, etc) a 10-12 person picket line in front of “Cupcake Jones” calling them out for what they’ve done might be a good response.
“Anti-Christian bigots welcome here!”
would be a good sign for “Jones”.
The Nazi/Jews analogy is interesting on several different levels.
A good number of senior Nazis were just craven opportunists rather than true believers. Hermann Goering falls, to some extent anyways, into this category. He had his own massive operation, more like an industry, built up around the anti-Jew laws to buy, for a small fraction of the actual value (otherwise known as legized theft), property and possessions from Jews who were forced to sell. He kept the stuff he wanted, sold or rented the rest out for good profit.
I really do believe thats a big part of the dynamic at work here with Cupcake Jones’ owners leading the effort.
You know, I wouldn’t play up the Christian/anti-Christian angle here. This is Oregon, Cupcake Jones could see a rallying effect.
Keeping it to something along the lines of Opportunistic Facists works better, imho.
Thanks for the link.
I agree, the owner of Cupcake Jones was the one who pulled the trigger regarding GoFundMe’s shutting down the fundraiser, and CJ’s owner Lisa Watson has several bakeries in the community adjacent to the business she attacked via siccing the faggot mafia on Sweet Cakes in order to shut them down and drive them out of business. Just another version of government-favored subsects of society using the law to achieve their otherwise unachievable and illegal outcome.
Lisa Watson needs some attention and I hope she gets it, too.
[[Maybe GoFundMe should be sued out of existence for DISCRIMINATION!!]]
Won’t happen, they will simply claim they have legal obligations that they followed when they cancelled the account- they claim that the account violated the TOS
[[“Christian ‘witch’ hunt”, right?]]
And if the GOP and conservatives and Christians had any backbone, we’d be screaming ‘Chrsitain witch hunt’ like the left does- WE would be SHAMING the left for their blatant bigotry and hatred- and those folks would never gain a foothold- yet because we’ve been practically silent on the issue, they have not only gained a toehold, they are about to crest the summit- Pastors and priests, and whatever other denomination cares to join, should be banding together, making a loud unmistakable ruckus, and declaring discrimination and informing the public that there is a modern day witch hunt going on and Christians ARE the targets-
this case is being appealed, and IF there is any justice, a judge will rule that sweet cakes is due a couple of million dollars for being unfairly discriminated against- IF this were to happen- this whole freakin nonsense by the gaystapo will cease as they will be too afraid that their hatred will result in backfiring I n the future too-
But I guess it’s too much to hope for justice to be done
At the rate things are going, it won’t be long before anybody with a FaceBook, LinkedIn or any type of social media page/Business website will be targeted for their beliefs.
I’m convinced of it!
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