Melissa Klein, Anti-Gay Baker, Cries At Values Voter Summit Over Business Closing

Anti-gay baker Melissa Klein openly cried at the Values Voter Summit last week over the forced closing of her business due to backlash stemming from her refusal to make a cake for a lesbian couple's wedding.

In January 2013, Sweet Cakes By Melissa refused service to a lesbian couple looking for a wedding cake. The subsequent fallout included national media attention and a state investigation for anti-gay discrimination -- perpetuated by the Kleins' continued actions, such as baking cakes for an "ex-gay" group.

The couple is now reportedly fighting a $150,000 lawsuit from the state, a reality that made Klein break into tears while discussing her passion for the process of baking wedding cakes during the Values Voter Summit.

"For me personally when I would sit down with them, I just would want to know everything about her wedding," an emotional Klein told the audience. "I'd want to know about the flowers, her dress, the centerpieces, her colors, the way her hair is going to be. I would even want to talk about 'where are you going on your honeymoon?'"

Executive summary — Christian business people who believed there would be any sort of “conscience” exception to gay rights laws were stupid to think so.

When I ran a custom publishing business, we turned away customers for all kinds of reasons having to do with my personal morality. We handled no sex-related advertising, no gambling or casino advertising, no alcohol-related promotions. A customer asked us to photograph a funeral. No. We were asked to depict a naked child riding a dolphin in the waves. No. One customer brought in a brochure and logo they liked and asked us to copy it. We refused. They were angry; but we were not about to pirate someone else's work. There are lots of other publishers who would have gladly done any of these things. If one of these customers had tried to sue over, it, they wouldn't have succeeded. The gaystoppo is solely sociopolitical, anti-first amendment and fascist; it is not about free market capitalism or access.

This is an issue that you either stand up or you lose. Really its something that local conservatives of like mind should’ve held protests but of course most of our kind are big talkers and eat the crap like good boys and girls when the rubber meets the road. Oh my I don’t want to be seen as mean. I don’t want to be considered extreme. I just want us all to get along.

Or turnabout is fair play.

Just as the gay activists deliberately chose a devout Christian, conservatives could target a known hyper-political/ progressive, atheist baker, and demand that he present a cake festooned with messages HE finds grossly against his religious sensibilities. MALE AND FEMALE HE MADE THEM. THOU SHALT LIE WITH WOMAN AS WITH MAN, THAT IS AN ABOMINATION, whatever.

Eventually one of the “targets” will bridle at presenting such a cake. Will he lose his license too?

(Full disclosure: I don’t really WANT anyone to lose their business license over such issues of conscience. Live and let live. But if “they” WON’T (live and let live), then: Don’t unilaterally disarm. Fight back.)

This is not about WHAT you make — it about is for WHOM. Civil rights laws for 50+ years have firmly held that businesses can pick their products, but they don’t have the freedom of conscience to pick their customers.

. . . and that destruction of freedom is precisely the grounds upon which those laws were opposed - by, for instance IIRC, Barry Goldwater.
That “Civil Right” was not a free lunch for freedom. It compromised rights which had conventionally been taken for granted - as the case of this baker so exquisitely illustrates. If this “application of the law” had been bruited at the time of the passage of those “firmly held for 50 years” laws, the possibility that this application would ever have arisen would have been dismissed out of hand.
And if it had been taken seriously, the law could not have been passed. After all, did you suspect that men marrying men would ever be held to be a civil right even 20 years ago? Recall, the Defense of Marriage Act is still on the books. So in what sense did the Congress assent to this application of any law at any time?
The same people who ratified the Constitution ratified the First Amendment - and the Constitution concludes with the date:

Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth.
There is no conceivable case in logic that the First Amendment permits discrimination against Christianity.
It is difficult to distinguish between persecuting Christians and making ancient tenants thereof a thought crime.

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