Discriminating Cakes. . .for Discriminating Tastes

Cute.

The Gay Thing: "Sweet Cakes by Melissa" Story Built on Lies (Update: Minus One Lie)

UPDATE: This story has been updated by its source, RawStory. Update is below.

Because of the way court cases wend their way through processes and appeals, this moldy old case, Sweet Cakes by Melissa keeps coming around. It's a case about an Oregon bakery that ran afoul of public accommodation laws by refusing to sell a cake to a lesbian couple. I've written about it, and related other cases, several times before, here, for one instance.

Image from source, Raw Story

Let me start this time, by saying that the entire tactic being used by the religious right regarding wedding vendors, civil clerks and magistrates in resistance to same-sex marriage is 100% bullshit. Not just in places, or in some cases, but complete bullshit in every case. It's so wrongheaded, and wrong in so many places, that it's rather difficult to write about, because the list of wrongs--and the tangents it takes you down--are so extensive. But the short version is, we're talking about civil marriage, which is a contract, not a religious sacrament. Civil marriage has coexisted with "holy matrimony" for eons, without causing a religious crisis for vendors, businesses, magistrates and clerks. A lengthy list of examples of past civil marriages that do not comport with mainstream religious beliefs can be hastily brought to mind, and yet there was no flurry of RFRA laws and other attempts to skirt around the rights of Americans to get civilly married. Shorter still: atheists don't have problems buying wedding cakes.

That only happened when gay people started the quest to get the right to marry. Suddenly, religiously delicate wedding vendors were coming out of the woodwork claiming that these civil marriages conflicted with their "sincerely held beliefs." Apparently, only The Gay Thing is "sinful" enough to warrant this brand new understanding of "religious freedom," meaning the right to be exempted from certain laws (or to ignore them), and to trample and trump the empirical rights of gay customers. Oddly enough, they rarely even try to define which "sincerely held belief" prevents them from selling their wares to gay couples, or how these beliefs enter into a typical business transaction in the first place. There's lots of bogus talk about them having to "participate in," "celebrate" or "condone" the ceremony by selling their product or service, all claims that are either in extreme dispute, or flatly disprovable.



Apparently, this is either "Sweet Cakes," or "Melissa."

What makes the Sweet Cakes by Melissa story even more of a lie, is that it started out before there was legal gay marriage in Oregon. This was a story about a couple, the Kleins, who refused to bake a cake for a gay couple's commitment ceremony reception. Not a sacred and/or legal ceremony. The Kleins broke the law doing this, since there is a state law that prohibits businesses from discriminating against sexual orientation, along with the standard list of gender, religion, race, and what have you. Yet, whenever the Kleins' story is recounted, you will be told (usually by the Kleins or by some of the loudly religious groups that have helped martyr them) that this had to do with the legalization of same-sex marriage. The Kleins' legal drama is consistently touted as a consequence. It wasn't.

[Excerpt]

Oregon bakers weren’t fined over cake — they were punished for sharing lesbian couple’s home address [See correction below]

The anti-LGBT owners of an Oregon bakery were not fined simply for refusing to sell a wedding cake to a same-sex couple – they were ordered to pay $135,000 in damages for intentionally causing their would-be customers emotional distress. e case has attracted widespread media attentiothe couple first filed their complaint in Januay 2013, and that is largely through the efforts of Aaron and Melissa Klein, the owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa.

Read more at: RawStory

"Correction: An earlier version of this article contained a significant error that resulted from failure to distinguish the difference between the agency’s recommendation and the commissioner’s final ruling. The bakers were not, as previously reported, punished for threats by others against the couple, as the agency had recommended. They were ordered by the commissioner to pay damages to the couple for emotional harm caused by their unlawful discrimination. We regret the error, and we would like to thank Eugene Volokh for clarifying the distinction." --RawStory 07/12/15

The Gay Thing: Oregon Rules Against Homophobic Bakery

The case of the Oregon baker (along with other bakers, reception hall renters, florists, photographers, etc.) who refused service for a gay couple has been a favorite topic for anti-marriage equality types. They're amazingly wrong in most of their arguments, and not just subjectively, but empirically. They are--typically--knee-jerk reactionaries, and under the illusion that their "religious liberty" is somehow threatened by cases such as this, and that Christians in America are some kind of persecuted minority. It's ten kinds of stupid.

But let me just address this particular case with some quick points that these folks gloss over or flatly refuse to discuss:

• Oregon--though it now recognizes same-sex marriages from out of state--did not at the time either perform or recognize such marriages. So this case is not about "gay marriage" at all, because there wasn't a legal one in the first place.

Does this guy own just one t-shirt? Image from source, Joe.My.God.

• Wedding cakes, the product in question, are not used in wedding ceremonies anyway, they're used in receptions, the party after the wedding. Receptions are almost never religious in nature.
• Civil marriage isn't holy matrimony. It's not religious at all unless the participants wish to include religion in it. It is a legal contract, and is usually quite serious to the spouses and families, but it is not sacred. Sacred is a religious term, not a legal one.
• Many businesses sell or rent their products and services for weddings and receptions. Bakers are not materially different from tuxedo renters or dress sellers. The suggestion that a cake baker is "participating in" or "celebrating" or has "anything whatsoever to do with" the events the cakes are for is as insane as a tuxedo renter worrying about how his customers are going to party in their tuxes.
• A business is not a person, and has no "religious beliefs" or "religious freedoms."
• Public accommodations laws apply to many classes of people, in some areas, gays included. You don't get to say "whites only," and you don't get to say "no gays."
• A person working in the wedding/formal event industry is 100% likely to have his or her products and services used in some event or activity that isn't in line with their own beliefs. This is truly a case of "if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."

There are more bullet points I could list. Lots more. And while cake is a fairly frivolous thing to get all agitated about, this one really fires me up, because of the lengthy list of either untrue or just stupid arguments from the other side. Think, people!

[Excerpt]

Sweet Cakes by Melissa violated same-sex couple's civil rights when it refused to make wedding cake, state finds

State labor investigators have determined a Gresham bakery violated the civil rights of a same-sex couple when it refused to make a cake for the women's wedding. The Bureau of Labor and Industries said Friday that it has wrapped up its investigation into Sweet Cakes by Melissa. . .

Read more at: Joe.My.God.