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OREGON: Anti-Gay Bakery Finally Pays Up

Stonecold

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Despite raising over $500K via Christian crowdfunding campaigns, Oregon’s anti-gay bakery refused to pay its fine. Until today:

The co-owner of a Gresham bakery that refused to make a wedding cake for a lesbian couple delivered a $136,927 check that covers the couple’s damages following the January 2013 incident. Aaron and Melissa Klein, the owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa, refused to bake a cake for Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer, saying it would infringe on their religious beliefs.

In July, Oregon Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian ordered the Kleins pay $135,000 for emotional damages suffered by the couple. “This case is not about a wedding cake or a marriage. It is about a business’s refusal to serve someone because of their sexual orientation. Under Oregon law, that is illegal,” the bureau’s final order states.
 

gb2000ie

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So - they raised $500K, and they paid $137K, does that not mean that being a biggot is REALLY profitable? Much more so than making fucking cakes! Me thinks the law is not working out so good here.

B.
 
H

HustleMe15

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OK, I've been told that I have a very odd view of situations like this. Personally, I don't think that Sweet Cakes should have been made to pay a dime. Now of course I don't know the full story, I wasn't there when it happened. So, I'll use an example:

Let's say that I owned my own cake shop. And I am proud of my gay heritage! You come into my store to order a wedding cake because you hear mine are the best in town. But I refuse your order because "I don't do cakes for straight weddings". I haven't discriminated against you. I just told you I don't do straight wedding cakes. If you want to order a dozen cupcakes, or order a birthday cake, you are more than welcome to, and I'd love to have your business.

So how is what I did any different than what Sweet Cakes did. Unless they specifically said that they were not going to bake the cake for a gay couple, then just by refusing to bake a wedding cake on it with two grooms on top, that isn't discrimination as I see it. It's just a business that doesn't want to do gay wedding cakes. Unless they barred the couple from ever coming back into the store. Now in the post that StoneCode did there is a quote "this case is not about a wedding cake or a marriage. It is about a business’s refusal to serve someone because of their sexual orientation. Under Oregon law, that is illegal.” If that's the case then I agree.

I mean how pissy can people get? What was wrong with Sweet Cakes turning down the order and then walk to another cake maker? It was freaking Portland, Oregon!! City that size I'm sure there are 10 or 20 more who would have been just happy baking the cake.

$135,000 in "emotional damage"? Please! It's a cake. Yes, I'll admit that gay people do get legitimately discriminated against all the time. But ones like this "take the cake".

What if Wal-Mart decided not sell rainbow flags, or umbrellas. Are we going to sue them for discrimination? I doubt it, they just don't carry the product, and you move on to somewhere that does. If the owners were a religious couple, I can see that doing a gay wedding cake would have been a little upsetting.

What if my little cake shop only did vanilla flavored cake because that is what I like best? Are you going to sue me because I didn't make you a chocolate one? I don't DO chocolate cakes!!

And I think that ANY business has a right to dictate the services they provide, as long as they are not discriminating against a protected class. A mobile DJ my not do school dances, a restaurant may not serve desserts. And a cake shop should be able to refuse to do a cake for a gay wedding.

I hope I got my point across, or at least tried to. Let the debate continue!
 

gb2000ie

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@HustleMe15 the concept is that if you offer a service to the public, you have to offer it to all the public.

You don't have to do anything special for anyone, you just have to do the same for everyone no mater who they are.

If you are photographer who does not do weddings, you cannot be forced to do gay weddings (or straight weddings).

You would think that laws like this would not be necessary because surely people would refuse to patronise racists or sexists or homophobes, but as the blacks of America's south found out, that is just not how reality works.

American civil rights legislation did not come out of a vacuum - it came about because it was needed. There was a very real problem to be solved, and I don't believe for one second that it has gone away. I have zero doubt that if you repealed the civil rights act, there would be whites-only lunch counters the next day.

B.
 

dancap48066

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here's the condensed version:

In August 2013, the women complained to the state Bureau of Labor and Industries. 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.

Oregon law bans discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in jobs and in places that serve the public, such as restaurants and bakeries.

Laurel Bowman-Cryer filed a complaint in January 2013, but because she filed it online on her smartphone she was not shown the disclaimer informing her that the complaint, including her name and address, would be sent to the individual against whom it was being made. When Aaron Klein received the complaint, he immediately published it on his Facebook page in full, with Laurel’s name and address included.

In testimony Tuesday, Rachel Bowman-Cryer said she and her wife received death threats as media attention and criticism from strangers escalated in the months after the story went national in January 2013.

She said the threats were part of a stream of “hateful, hurtful things” that came after the couple’s contact information (home address, phone and email) was posted on Aaron Klein’s personal Facebook page. She said she feared for her life and her wife’s life.

Also on Tuesday, Rachel Bowman-Cryer 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.

She said they spoke to state adoption officials who told them it was the couple’s responsibility to protect the children and keep privileged information confidential, even as their own privacy was threatened by news coverage of the case.

State officials told the Bowman-Cryers that if they couldn’t protect the foster children in their home from the harassment that resulted from the Klein’s public posting of their home address, etc., they would lose the children—the children they were trying to adopt. Can you say stressful?!

Attempts to downplay what the Bowman-Cryers went through (calling them “rice paper lesbians,” etc.) ignore what the Bowman-Cryers ignores the gravity of what the couple suffered. The $135,000 ultimately awarded in damages was only for the suffering resulting from the initial refusal (which the commissioner found continued throughout the period of media attention), but this was not the sum of what the couple experienced at the hands of the Kleins. The simple complaint they lodged resulted in a media firestorm brought with it death threats, harassment, and the possibility of losing their children.
 

cacc

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I personally think that as a business owner you ought to reserve the right to decide who you do and don't want to do business with. If you don't want to take my money because you don't approve of my lifestyle, then guess what, I don't want to give you my business either. I'll just go to one of the many other cake providers or providers of whatever else I might be looking for and get it from them instead.
 

gb2000ie

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I personally think that as a business owner you ought to reserve the right to decide who you do and don't want to do business with.

You have that right in BUSINESS dealings. But retail, that is direct selling to the public, is a special case, with very good reason.

Shops, resteraunts, garages, hotels, etc. provide vital serives without which people cannot live.

Even in retail though, you still have a lot of rights as a business. You can refuse to serve people who abuse your staff, who abuse you, who do not pay their bills, who are rude to other customer, and much more. You just can't refuse service based on race, gender, religion, orientation, and a few other recognised special classes.

All with sound reasons rooted in real-world problematic experiences.

If you don't want to take my money because you don't approve of my lifestyle, then guess what, I don't want to give you my business either. I'll just go to one of the many other cake providers or providers of whatever else I might be looking for and get it from them instead.

Right - you would think that woudl world.

But history shows us it does not. If discrimination is legal, you very quickly arrive in a situation where it is not possible to get service in many entire towns or even cities. Just look at what happened in the American south to trigger the laws that protect customers from retail predjudices.

B.
 

W!nston

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What worries me is that corporations with limitless resources to litigate can find ways to sneak through loop holes. Hobby Lobby for example.

How can a corporation's rights be considered on the level with human rights based on religious grounds?

Small businesses are held accountable while mega-corporations skirt laws at will.

Life isn't fair after all :))
 

gb2000ie

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What worries me is that corporations with limitless resources to litigate can find ways to sneak through loop holes. Hobby Lobby for example.

How can a corporation's rights be considered on the level with human rights based on religious grounds?

Small businesses are held accountable while mega-corporations skirt laws at will.

Life isn't fair after all :))

Sad :(

But so true.

As bad as the Hobby Lobby decision was (and it was), I think the People's united decision is even worse - defining money as speach means that buying elections now gets all the protections of the first amendment, while democracy takes a pounding.

B.
 

cacc

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But history shows us it does not. If discrimination is legal, you very quickly arrive in a situation where it is not possible to get service in many entire towns or even cities. Just look at what happened in the American south to trigger the laws that protect customers from retail predjudices.

B.

That's a valid argument I suppose. If you say it's ok not to sell to gays or someone of some particular race or religion then you could end up with doctors not wanting to heal them, police not wanting to protect them, Etc. It's a slippery slope.
 
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