Aaron and Melissa Klein had a business in Gresham, Oregon, called “Sweet Cakes By Melissa,” which was a purveyor of sweet cakes, obviously, and is definitely not a veiled reference to Melissa’s piping hot rack. And of course, they have Beliefs. Very, very important Christian beliefs, the kind which are Sincerely Held, and are centered around hating gays. So, same old story, a gay couple wanted a cake for their wedding, gross bigots refused to bake cake, etc. Complaints were filed with Oregon’s Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI), and after a couple of years of litigation, they ruled last week that the Kleins were GUILTY AS CHARGED under Oregon’s nondiscrimination laws[.]…. The state decided that the Kleins should have to pay a fine of $135,000 — 75K to the lesbian what was shopping for the cake and did not get to have cake, and another 60K for her wife, who was presumably on a non-cake gay agenda mission that day — as penance for their crimes.
Here in Oregon, we generally have little time for religious bigotry, so this story has become rather tiresome and yawn-inducing. For many, many months, the Kleins have been acting the part of “persecuted Christians” in an effort to mask the fact that THEY BROKE THE LAW. Yeah, really; turns out that refusing to provide goods or services to one class of people that you’d readily provide to another is considered…wait, what was that again? Oh, yeah- discrimination…and it’s against state law.
You could substitute “African-American” for “gay,” and the world would be up in arms over the injustice of it all. For whatever reason, discriminating against the LGBT community for “religious reasons” is held to be acceptable for many- so much so that many are willing to donate to pay the Kleins’ fine. A GoFundMe site was set up, because that’s what you do when you’re a high tech bigot and hater in the Internet Age.
It’s What Jesus Would Do, don’tchaknow??
Prove yourself to be a big enough bigot, and knuckle-draggers from sea to shining sea will be throwing money at you. Except that in this case, things didn’t exactly go as planned.
But by the time they had “earned” $109,000, dark lord Satan decided to intervene, by cancelling their GoFundMe! Trickster Devil that he is, apparently Satan had previously written into the GoFundMe rules that raising money to pay for actual violations of the law is Not Allowed. GoFundMe said, specifically, that “the subjects of the ‘Support Sweet Cakes By Melissa’ campaign have been formally charged by local authorities and found to be in violation of Oregon state law concerning discriminatory acts. Accordingly, the campaign has been disabled.” The company also said that this was different from the GoFundMe for the Deliverance extras who own Memories Pizza in Indiana, because those people didn’t actually break any laws, but merely said they didn’t want to make pizza for faggot weddings, in the abstract. Details!
It’s tough to argue with GoFundMe’s decision; the Kleins did break the law, and if you don’t want people donating money for all manner of fines and civil penalties, you have to draw the line somewhere, right? In typical uber-Christian fashion, though, Melissa Klein sees that hand of Satan at work:
Uh…no, Satan’s not at work here, God doesn’t always win in the end, and you don’t get to play the martyr card…especially when GoFundMe’s statement said the Kleins would be able to keep the money that had been collected. If the Kleins- or anyone else- can show me where Jesus Christ preached against the evil that is homosexuality and same-sex marriage, perhaps I’d take them seriously. The truth is that Jesus never preached on those topics…and if you’re going to harken back to the Old Testament, why are you eating shellfish or wearing clothes made of mixed fibers?
Careful, there; your cafeteria Christianity is showing…and they only thing bigger than your capacity for self-righteous hypocrisy is your willingness to take it to the bank.
