WebProNews

Tag: sweet cakes by melissa

  • Sweet Cakes by Melissa Suit Not About LGBT, But Death Threats

    Sweet Cakes by Melissa is getting all kinds of love from Christian conservatives and others who feel that they were wrongly ruled against by an Oregon court this week.

    In one instance getting national attention, Candace Cameron Bure and Raven-Symone had a heated exchange this week when the case against Sweet Cakes by Melissa was discussed on The View. Bure presented the case as a miscarriage of justice, saying that the owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa had a right to freedom of association.

    “It’s about constitutional rights. It’s about First Amendment rights. We do have the right to still choose who we associate with,” Bure said.

    But those casting this as a purely LGBT-vs-bigots fight are missing a big chunk of the issue. True, as Raven-Symone pointed out, “The Oregon law bars businesses from discriminating against sexual orientation, race, disability, age or religion.”

    But the lawsuit brought against Sweet Cakes by Melissa was not just about that. When the bakery refused to serve them as customers, the plaintiffs, Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer, rightly brought a complaint to the Department of Justice and then with the Bureau of Labor and Industries.

    But when that complaint was filed, a copy was emailed to the owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa, whereupon they posted the complaint to their Facebook page. The contents of that complaint are the rub.

    The names, home address, and email address of the plaintiffs were in that post.

    The Bowman-Cryer couple received death threats as a result of that post. The foster children they were trying to adopt were at risk of being taken away from them because the state adoption agency told them they were responsible for keeping the threats at bay and their confidential information out of the hands of those who might endanger the children.

    Thus the lawsuit. In the end, Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer were awarded a judgment for $135,000, not as fines or civil penalties against Sweet Cakes by Melissa, but for the “emotional suffering stemming directly from unlawful discrimination.”

    So framing the award to the lesbian couple as some persecution for being Christian is way wrong. Those people put the couple and their children in danger. That’s why they were ordered to pay up.

  • Candace Cameron Bure Says Her Gay Friends Still Love Her After She Denied Discrimination

    The View had Candace Cameron Bure on as guest host recently, and the actress famously got into a bit of a tiff with regular host Raven-Symone. The point of departure between the two women had to do with Aaron and Melissa Klein, of Sweet Cakes by Melissa bakery in Oregon. The bakery had refused to make a wedding cake for Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer because they are both women.

    Candace Cameron Bure commonly represents an ultra-conservative Christian viewpoint on the show. She is the sister of evolution-denier Kirk Cameron. But Raven-Simone called the actions of the bakery discrimination, drawing a parallel with civil rights.

    “The Oregon law bars businesses from discriminating against sexual orientation, race, disability, age or religion,” Raven Symone said, “and to me, it’s the same exact thing that they did back in the day saying that black people couldn’t do certain things because it’s my ‘religious belief.’”

    Candace Cameron Bure countered, “I don’t think this is discrimination at all. This is about freedom of association. It’s about constitutional rights. It’s about First Amendment rights. We do have the right to still choose who we associate with.”

    She offered further elaboration.

    “[The bakery] didn’t refuse to bake the cake because of [the couple’s] sexual orientation,” Candace Cameron Bure continued. “In fact, they baked cakes for them previously. They had a problem with the actual ceremony because that — the ceremony — is what conflicted with their religious beliefs. They are saying that they stand for marriage between a man and a woman.”

    The pair of hosts seemed at loggerheads, but revealed later that they hugged it out during a commercial break. Candace Cameron Bure later told The Church Boys podcast, “I wasn’t there to debate gay marriage or straight marriage. It was about these bakers and their religious freedoms and the freedom of association.”

    Candace Cameron Bure further told The Blaze, “I wanted to be as truthful and honest and speak in love as much as I could, but just be factual about things. And that’s really where I was coming from.”

    But she also says that she got support, of a sort, from her “very close gay friends.”

    “My favorite part were all the texts that I got from my … very close gay friends that were saying, ‘We love you and we can all have different opinions, and you fight for what you believe in and I’m going to fight for what I believe in,’” she said.

    “It’s always interesting to hear where everyone’s coming from. We can learn to have respectful conversations with people that we don’t agree with.”