Discrimination pays for bakers

More than two years ago Sweet Cakes By Melissa owners Aaron and Melissa Klein refused to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. The couple, Laurel Bowman and Rachel Cryer, filed a complaint with the State of Oregon, expressing the emotional upset that illegal refusal cost them. Later, they would also be forced to detail the death threats and other negative attention visited upon them by the Kleins' anonymous supporters who believe they were following the edicts of their Christian faith.

Late last month, after a lengthy legal battle – which at one point included the Kleins' lawyer asking for the proceedings to be stopped and the same-sex couple to be presented with a $200,000 bill for damages, and attorney and court fees, which was rightly denied – the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industry (BOLI) decided in favor of the Bowman-Cryers, fining the Kleins $135,000.

But the lengthy, drawn out case gave plenty of time and opportunity for conservatives and the religious right to paint the Bowman-Cryers and the LGBT community as "fascists" and to generate a great deal of public sympathy for the Kleins, mostly via false statements, hyperbole, truth-twisting, and just straight-up lying.

That sympathy has turned into big bucks for the Kleins.

[snip]

"We've been mischaracterized," Aaron Klein adds. "We've served gays on many occasions." In court documents he admitted to also quoting Leviticus 18:22 to Rachel Bowman-Cryer's mother after declining to bake the wedding cake.

"We're not those type of people." "We've been mischaracterized." Leviticus quotation notwithstanding.

The Kleins, via their Facebook page, are promoting other fundraisers too, like one by the Lynchwood Church of God, and their P.O. box address for please who wish to send them cash or checks directly.

So, $345,000, plus let's call it $60,000, and not counting any other cash from fundraising efforts like Graham's Samaritan's Purse and others, gives the Kleins $405,000. That's exactly three times the amount of the fine the people of Oregon imposed on them after discriminating against the Bowman-Cryers.

It's actually surprising how un-generous the Kleins' supporters have been. After all, to the far Christian right, they are heroes and martyrs who are standing up against the long arm of the law and gay "fascism."

By contrast, the owners of Indiana's Memories Pizza earlier this year merely told a reporter they couldn't, if asked, cater a wedding of a same-sex couple. A hypothetical that never came to pass. In return, conservatives and the religious right threw more than twice as much cash at the pizza purveyors – nearly $850,000.

The entire story is at the link.