If you read this blog, you certainly know my position on gay marriage.
For those of you who don\’t, I consider it a matter of personal choice and personal freedom. My, your or anyone\’s sexual orientation is nobody\’s business but mine, yours or theirs. And if two people of the same sex want to commit themselves to marriage, I wish them nothing but happiness.
That said, as there is a truly despicable situation in progress regarding a gay marriage that you should know about. But, in this case, it is not being perpetrated against a gay couple, it is being perpetrated by the gay community and its supporters.
You may recall the story of a bakery in Oregon, named Sweet Cakes By Melissa, which was (not is, was) operated by a devoutly religious Christian couple, Aaron and Melissa Klein. Two years ago a gay couple asked that a cake be made for their wedding, and were refused on the grounds that the Kleins\’ religion considered gay marriage a sin.
The gay couple could, of course, have gone to a different bakery, thus ending the issue right there (they get their cake and the Klein\’s maintain their religious position). But one of the women who ordered the cake, Laura Bowman, decided to make a legal issue out of it. She publicly condemned Sweet Cakes By Melissa, and filed a complaint with the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries.
But that is far from all that happened.
From a May 31, 2013 article at theblaze.com:
WhileAaron and Melissa told TheBlaze that the community initially ralliedaround them – a collective action that helped spark additionalbusiness – that support has since waned. In place of the extrabusiness, the Kleins regularly receive (especially in light ofrenewed media coverage) virulent e-mails and phone calls.
Fromclaims that Aaron should be shot to one apparent threat that he beraped, the hate and angst being thrown the Klein family\’s way iscertainly serious in nature. Some have even wished for the couple\’sfive children to be stricken with illness. Aaron and Melissa shared anumber of the e-mails with TheBlaze.
“Youstupid bible thumping, hypocritical b**ch. I hope your kids getreally, really, sick and you go out of business,” reads one e-mail.
“Here\’shoping you go out of business, you bigot. Enjoy hell,” readsanother.
Butit\’s not just rhetoric that the husband and wife have encounteredas a result of their refusal to provide the cake. They claim thattheir wedding vendors have been “badgered and harassed” untilthey refuse to do business with Sweet Cakes by Melissa.
Not surprisingly, this campaign of hatred against the Kleins forced the closure of their business.
And that is not all.
The Bureau of Labor and Industries has ruled against them (no surprise there). And the penalty for refusing to bake a cake on religious grounds is …..you better be sitting down for this……..up to $75,000 for both Aaron and Melissa.
That\’s right. It\’s no typo. Not $75 each (total $150) and a warning, but $75,000 each (total $150,000)…for what they did at a bake shop that has already been forced to shut down, leaving a family of seven without their livelihood.
Over a cake.
Let me again assure you that I 100% support gay marriage. But I also support religious freedom, and I also support the concept that punishments should fit crimes.
This is a sick perversion of the law. It flies in the face of logic, common sense and understanding of any kind.
And it is an even sicker demonstration of hatred; hatred which, remarkably, is being piled on in the name of a population segment which well knows what it is to be hated. I hope they enjoy being the dispensers rather than the recipients of that hatred.
Note to The Bureau of Labor and Industries: how about either forgoing the fine, or making it something nominal? Hasn\’t this couple been persecuted enough for their religious beliefs already?
