US Supreme Court decision really takes the cake

A salutary example of how legislation for homosexual "marriage" will affect those with conscientious objections is the plight of Aaron and Melissa Klein, owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa bakery in Portland, Oregon. State Labor Commissioner, Brad Avakian, the state's top labor official, ordered them to pay a lesbian couple for emotional and mental suffering that resulted from "denial of service". The Kleins had cited their Christian beliefs against homosexual "marriage" in refusing to make a cake for the lesbians' wedding.

Avakian's ruling upheld a preliminary finding earlier that the Kleins, owners of Sweet Cakes had discriminated against the Portland couple on the basis of their sexual orientation. This case has ignited what is likely to be a long-running battle in the culture wars between civil rights advocates and religious freedom proponents who argue that business owners should have the right to refuse services for homosexual "weddings". Religious freedom is also a civil right but is consistently ignored by "civil rights" proponents such as the American Council for Civil Liberties (ACLU) which almost invariably take sides against religious rights.

Avakian's final order made it clear that serving potential customers equally trumps the Kleins' religious beliefs. Under
Oregon law, businesses cannot discriminate or refuse service based on sexual orientation, just as they cannot turn customers away because of race, sex, disability, age or religion, the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI) said in a news release.

"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. Within Oregon's public accommodations law is the basic principle of human decency that every person, regardless of their sexual orientation, has the freedom to fully participate in society. The ability to enter public places, to shop, to dine, to move about unfettered by bigotry."

Though the Oregon Equality Act of 2007 includes an exemption for religious organizations and schools, it does not permit private business owners to deny service and discriminate against potential customers, BOLI said.

Avakian ordered the Kleins to pay $75,000 to Rachel Bowman-Cryer and $60,000 to Laurel Bowman-Cryer. Anna Harmon, the Klein's lawyer said an appeal to the Oregon Court of Appeals is likely: "I believe at this point they are intending to preserve their constitutional rights as much as they can".

This was confirmed in a Facebook post on the "Sweet Cakes by Melissa" page. "We will NOT give up this fight, and we will NOT be silenced. We stand for God's truth, God's word and freedom for ALL Americans. We are here to obey God not man, and we will not conform to this world. If we were to lose everything it would be totally worth it for our Lord who gave his one and only son, Jesus, for us! God will win this fight!"

In a statement issued through their attorney, Paul A. Thompson, the Bowman-Cryers thanked BOLI for "sending a clear message that discrimination will not be tolerated in our state."

"This has been a terrible ordeal for our entire family. We never imagined finding ourselves caught up in a fight for social justice," they said. "We endured daily, hateful attacks on social media, received death threats and feared for our family's safety, yet our goal remained steadfast. We were determined to ensure that this kind of blatant discrimination never happened to another couple, another family, another Oregonian."

The controversy began in on 17 January 2013 when Cryer (as she was known then) brought her mother, Cheryl McPherson, to a cake tasting appointment she had set up with Melissa Klein. That day, Melissa stayed home and Aaron went to the bakery. When he asked for the names of the bride and groom, Cryer said there would be two brides.

"I said, 'I'm very sorry, I believe I have wasted your time. We do not do cakes for same sex weddings,' " Klein testified.

In August 2013, Cryer and her partner filed a complaint with BOLI. The agency conducted an investigation and in January 2014 brought charges that the Kleins had unlawfully discriminated against the couple because of their sexual orientation.

BOLI investigators said the Kleins' refusal violated the women's civil rights and recommended they pay $75,000 in damages to each woman for emotional suffering. That triggered a conciliation process between the two parties to see if a settlement could be reached. The Kleins and the state, acting on the women's behalf, could not agree, so the case went before Alan McCullough, a BOLI administrative law judge.

During a hearing in March, the lesbian women testified to emotional stress they attributed to their experience with Sweet Cakes as well as the glare of media attention that followed. Rachel Bowman-Cryer also disclosed that she and Laurel felt an even greater level of stress because they were foster parents for two young girls and feared they might lose the children. The couple has since legally adopted the girls, who are now 8 and 6 years old. [The Kleins have five children but their stress apparently counts for nought]

Aaron Klein said his family, too, had suffered because of the case. Reporters came to his home and his shop, he testified, during the March hearing. The Sweet Cakes by Melissa car was vandalized and broken into twice. Photographers and florists severed ties with the company, eventually forcing the Kleins to close their storefront shop in September 2013. The business now operates out of the couple's home in Sandy, with Melissa Klein primarily filling orders for family and friends.

Following the hearing, McCullough recommended $75,000 in damages be awarded to Rachel Bowman-Cryer and $60,000 to Laurel Bowman-Cryer.

The couple held a commitment ceremony in June 2013 and were married in May 2014, shortly after a federal judge struck down Oregon's ban on same-sex marriage.

Though the bakery has been closed for nearly two years, the final order holds the Kleins personally liable for the debt.
Harmon said she doubted the couple has the resources to pay the awarded damages. "I don't have any access to their checkbook, but I can tell you they are living on a garbage man's salary and they have five kids. This is a personal debt. The business is gone."

The plight of the Kleins is relevant to the recommendation by Australia's Human rights Commissioner, Tim Wilson, who suggested in an article in The Australian (6/7/15) that business people who had conscientious objections to providing services for homosexual weddings could be given exemptions if they advertised that they only cater for religious-based heterosexual marriages, but not for civil ceremonies. However many of those who provide wedding services have no objection to catering for heterosexual civil ceremonies. Why should they be excluded from such business opportunities particularly when there would only be a few homosexual civil weddings and these couples can easily organise their cakes, flowers and venues elsewhere?

At least three online attempts to help the Kleins defray their expenses were launched on the heels of McCullough's ruling.The first raised $109,000 on GoFundMe but the account was quickly closed after the company determined the fundraising effort violated its terms of service prohibiting campaigns that benefit individuals or groups facing formal charges or claims of serious violations of the law. Two faith-based nonprofits in North Carolina and Wisconsin continue to accept donations for the couple.

There is a second punishmnt imposed by Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian who has ordered the Kleins to "cease and desist from publishing, circulating, issuing or displaying or causing to be pubished ....any communication to the effect that any of the accommodations... will be refused, withheld, or denied to..."

His order made the Kleins speechless all right -- but not for long. Once the shock wore off, Aaron and Melissa made it quite clear that they wouldn't stop speaking out about their case, no matter what the government threatened. "We will not give up this fight," Aaron wrote on their Facebook page, "and we will not be silenced."

Family Research Council, USA, has warned that if freedom of religion can be trampled, freedom of speech won't be far behind. Aaron and Melissa's attorney Anna Harmon was stunned: "Now he has ruled that the Kleins' simple
statement of personal resolve to be true to their faith is unlawful. This is a brazen attack on every American's right to freely speak and imposes government orthodoxy on those who do not agree with government-sanctioned ideas."

This is reminiscent of the threat by Tasmanian homosexual activist, Rodney Croome, that Hobart's Catholic Bishop Porteous could be hauled before the Anti-Discrimination Commissioner after allegations by Croome and others that Tasmanian Catholic schools have been teaching students Catholic doctrine on marriage. Bishop Porteous had distributed the Australian Catholic Bishops booklet on marriage to students in Catholic schools to be given to their parents.

Although Avakian's gay activism is no secret, his final ruling is quite dictatorial -- accusing the Kleins, among other things, of devaluing "humanity for all of us." When Aaron and Melissa explained that they couldn't participate in a same-sex ceremony, "their act was much more than the denial of a product," the commissioner claimed. "It was, and is, a denial of [the couple's] freedom to participate equally. It is the epitome of being told there are places you cannot go, things you cannot do... or be. [The Kleins'] conduct was a clear and direct statement that [this couple] lacked an identity worth being recognized."

Well yes, there are things they could cannot do, unimportant stuff like having their own biological children....

The state of Oregon didn't allow same-sex "marriage" at the time the Kleins declined to bake the cake. Avakian blamed the Kleins for inflicting more than 100 emotional and physical problems on the lesbian couple, including "weight gain" and "distrust of men" to "feeling mentally raped." As Fox News's Todd Starnes said, that must have been quite a cake! If anyone has suffered personally, it's the Kleins -- who not only lost their business, but their sense of personal safety. While the plaintiffs said they "fear being harassed," Aaron and Melissa actually were -- with death threats, property damage, and now, a government gag order. "We were just running our business the best we could -- following the Lord's example," Melissa told Todd. "I'm just blown away by the ruling." So are most legal experts. An order of this magnitude is not only unprecedented, but unconstitutional.

Tony Perkins of Family Research Council points out in his Washington Update, 6/7/15: "As the smoke starts to clear from the Supreme Court's marriage ruling, this story makes an important point: the Left's goal is not, nor has it ever been, marriage. What every American should have seen at the Supreme Court was not a finish line, but the beginning of a fierce struggle for our basic freedoms. That's why legislation like Senator Mike Lee's First Amendment Defense Act is so urgent. We need to stop the federal government from doing what some states already are: punishing the rights of Christians in the name of 'tolerance.'

"Fortunately, this young, God-fearing couple have no intentions of going quietly. 'This man has no power over me,' Aaron said [of Avakian] He seems to think he can tell me to be quiet... Unfortunately, he's doing this with the wrong Christian, because I fight back.' You can fight back too. Contact your congressman and senators and ask them to support FADA and people like Aaron and Melissa, whose only crime is exercising the freedoms America just celebrated. [on July 4th]"

Here in Australia we can also contact our MHRs and Senators. The threat to freedom of religion Croome foreshadowed has already been launched by Tasmanian homosexual activist, Martine Delaney who will be running as a Green's candidate for the federal seat of Franklin. She confirmed to WIN news that she was taking her complaint about the Catholic pamphlet "Don't Mess with Marriage" to the state's Anti-Discrimination Commissioner.

I had always thought that eating too much cake caused "weight gain". This is the first time I have heard that being denied a cake has the same effect.