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Sweet Cakes by Melissa refused service to a lesbian couple Avakian lost his bid to Oregon Secretary of State to a Republican (CNN) — Could it be the year of the underdog? The presidential election wasn't the only contest to see an upset. Oregon Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian, who came to national attention for heftily fining a local bakery that refused to make a wedding cake for a lesbian couple, lost. Avakian, a champion of the LGBTQ community, was running for Secretary of State. As labor commissioner since 2008, Avakian often made news for his tough calls against businesses discriminating...

You’ve seen the story multiple times already: a Christian baker declines to cater a gay wedding, and gets sued in the process. The most publicized came out of Oregon, where the bakery Sweet Cakes by Melissa chose not to bake a wedding for a same-sex wedding. Rachel Bowman-Cryer and her mother visited Sweet Cakes planning to order a wedding cake. Bowman-Cryer had purchased a cake previously from the Kleins for her mother’s sixth wedding. Bowman-Cryer wanted to have the same cake she had purchased for her mother. That’s when Aaron Klein asked what the name of the bride and groom...

You know the big stuff already: Donald Trump won the presidency, defeating Hillary Clinton by bursting through her leaky blue firewall.... Meanwhile, here are three lower-profile results that are worth noting: (1) Oregon's Democratic Secretary of State went down to defeat, marking the first GOP victory in a statewide election in 14 years. More significantly, the loser of this race was known to many as the infamous bully who led the charge to fine a Christian-owned bakery $144,000 for declining to provide services to a same-sex wedding... (2) In Colorado, voters absolutely demolished a ballot initiative to create a government-run,...

Melissa Klein was checking her bank accounts just a few weeks before Christmas when her face turned ashen. The money was gone - every single penny. Oregon's Bureau of Labor and Industries had confiscated all the cash in Mrs. Klein's checking account and savings account as well as a special account set aside for their church tithe. (snip) "It was like my breath was taken away," Mrs. Klein told me in a telephone conversation. "I panicked. Everything was gone." And, as I said before, Commissioner Avakian even seized money set aside for You Know Who. "We had three accounts," she...

FULL TITLE: Baker Has a Message for the Gov’t Official Who Just Fined Him $135,000 for Declining a Gay Wedding Cake: ‘He’s Doing This With the Wrong Christian Just hours after Oregon officials announced that Aaron and Melissa Klein, owners of Sweetcakes by Melissa, would be fined $135,000 for their refusal to bake a cake for a lesbian wedding, Aaron Klein had a message for government officials: He has no plans of backing down. “He wants to silence anyone who opposes his point of view,” Klein told TheBlaze, speaking specifically about Oregon Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian, who has spearheaded the...

Aaron and Melissa Klein ordered not to talk publicly about their faith. I don’t know if you’ve followed the case of Sweet Cakes by Melissa. This is the now-closed bakery in Oregon that has become a target of state officials because its Christian owners declined to bake a cake for a lesbian wedding. Not only has the business been forced to close, the state has fined the Kleins $135,000. But it gets worse. Much worse. Now that state has responded to a radio interview the Kleins gave by ordering them to no longer talk publicly about why their faith compels...

Oregon Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian finalized a preliminary ruling today ordering Aaron and Melissa Klein, the bakers who refused to make a cake for a same-sex wedding, to pay $135,000 in emotional damages to the couple they denied service. “This case is not about a wedding cake or a marriage,” Avakian wrote. “It is about a business’s refusal to serve someone because of their sexual orientation. Under Oregon law, that is illegal.” In the ruling, Avakian placed an effective gag order on the Kleins, ordering them to “cease and desist” from speaking publicly about not wanting to bake cakes for...