It’s just a cake, Laurel Bowman-Cryer used to tell her wife, Rachel. But three and a half years have passed, and the hate mail keeps coming. Back in 2013, the owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa made headlines when they refused to make the lesbians’ wedding cake. A state official, in a move that’s redefined his political career, eventually ordered the bakers to pay $135,000. The Bowman-Cryers have received thousands of Facebook messages, each one calling them fat or evil, the dumb lesbians who ruined those Christian bakers’ lives. As they waited for their daughter’s school bus this May, Rachel’s cell phone dinged with a new missive…. “I am buying up my ammo right now you filthy, ugly, disgusting, fat, stupid, cruel, anti-Christian piece of liberal scum,” she read aloud. “I am getting ready for the war so I hope you have a good hiding place, you sick, disgusting, miserable, piece of degenerate lesbian scum.”
For the three and a half years since Aaron and Melissa Klein, proprietors of Sweet Cakes by Melissa in Gresham, refused to bake a wedding cake for a lesbian couple, we’ve heard only the Klein’s side. They wasted no time in exploiting this controversy, portraying themselves as the real victims. By claiming their “religious freedom” had been violated, they’ve attracted support (and large sums of cash) to their cause.
Turns out that Christian bigotry can be a very lucrative business.
What we haven’t heard is the side of the story from the couple who just wanted a wedding cake. They never sought attention, and certainly never wanted to start a crusade promoting the perceived injustice done them. They’ve remained silent as the Kleins became a cause celebre for Conservative anti-LGBT Christians, and they’ve been on the receiving end of some astonishingly hateful messages from so-called “Christians.”
EXACTLY what Jesus would do, eh??
Their silence has not protected them. As the Bowman-Cryers retreated, the fury over their case grew louder.
The bakers, Aaron and Melissa Klein, appealed their fines and hired former President George H.W. Bush’s White House lawyer. They toured the country with presidential candidate Ted Cruz as the face of a new fight for business owners’ religious freedom.
The legalization of same-sex marriage isn’t the end of the story, the Kleins told crowds from Iowa to Washington, D.C. The government, they said, wants to force Christian business owners to help gay people marry. The solution, the Kleins warned receptive lawmakers, would be legislation protecting religious liberty. Arkansas, North Carolina and Mississippi have approved bills since then, curtailing the civil rights gay people fought to win.
Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer just wanted a wedding cake. Like most any couple planning a wedding, they wanted something that would make their special day memorable. What they’ve come to understand is that for the Kleins it was never about the cake. It became about maximizing and monetizing their 15 minutes of fame as they claimed what was actually about bigotry and exclusion to be about “religious freedom”…because their Jesus believes the LGBT community to be “less than.”
As with most any couple wanting to get married, there’s a sweet and lovely story behind the Bowman-Cryer’s relationship, one that deserves to be known and respected. It deserved to be recognized and honored by the Kleins, and it certainly deserves to be acknowledged by the legions of “Christians” who’ve taken delight in threatening the couple and accusing them of being “anti-Christian.”
A few years earlier, Rachel Bowman-Cryer had purchased a wedding cake from Sweet Cakes by Melissa.
Two years later, Rachel and her mother still dreamed about Melissa’s “raspberry fantasy cake,” a two-layer, white butter cake baked with raspberries and topped with white chocolate. The mother and daughter had spent so many years estranged, they thought buying the same cake could be a way to bond.
They ran into Melissa at the 2013 Portland Bridal Expo.
“I was just like, ‘Hey, we are finally going to do it,’” Rachel testified in court. “‘I know I said I was never going to do it, but Laurel and I have decided we are going to get married, and we want you to make the cake.’”
Melissa testified later that she has only a “brief memory” of talking to Rachel’s mother at the busy expo. But Rachel believes the baker remembered she was a lesbian.
It wasn’t until the went to the bakery and spoke to Aaron Klein that the problems began.
The Kleins declined through their lawyer to speak with The Oregonian/OregonLive. But they testified that they’d agreed, after Washington legalized same-sex marriage in 2012, to “stand firm” if a gay or lesbian couple ever asked them to bake a cake for their wedding. The Kleins ran a Christian shop. Their pastor prayed over the bakery when it first opened, and Melissa Klein listened to religious music as she decorated cakes.
‘I think we may have wasted your time,” Aaron Klein told Rachel. “We don’t do same-sex weddings.”
Laurel Bowman-Cryer’s complaint was filed in anger, something she at the time wasn’t even fully aware that she was doing. She received a Facebook message from someone they didn’tt know referencing a post from Aaron Klein in which he complained about a notice he’d received from the Oregon Department of Justice.
The notice contained Laurel Bowman-Cryer’s contact information, something that Aaron Klein would publish on his Facebook page, leading to the virulent, hateful abuse from “Christians” the Bowman-Cryers continue to receive.
EXACTLY what Jesus would do, eh??
“This is what happens,” Aaron Klein wrote, “when you tell gay people you won’t do their ‘wedding’ cake.”
No, this is what happens when so-called “Christians” believe their faith allows them to judge others and find them wanting. It’s what happens when you treat others as “less than” and believe your Christianity allows you to judge others and expect them to live by your narrow moral/ideological/theological framework.
Laurel Bowman-Cryer had unwittingly unleashed a civil rights struggle of epic proportions, which wasn’t at all what she was hoping for. All she’d wanted was a wedding cake.
By the end of the first day, their inboxes were filled with hate. Hundreds of messages promised war or death.
“Can’t wait to see you die and go to hell one day,” one said.
The reason the Bowman-Cryer’s side of the story is so important is that until now they’ve declined interview requests, so no one has known of the toll this struggle they never wanted has taken on them. This was never a crusade, never part of some wider struggle for marriage equality and LGBT rights. They just wanted a wedding cake…and ended up caught up in a maelstrom created by those with an agenda revolving around using their bastardized version of Christianity to justify hatred, bigotry, and discrimination.
The Kleins were touring the country, speaking at conferences and presidential campaign events. They had raised more than $500,000 and still sold the raspberry fantasy cake online, but the Kleins warned evangelicals in North Carolina that lesbians had forced them to close their physical bakery. A month later, the Southern state passed a law repealing LGBT civil rights laws.
Back in Oregon, Avakian launched a bid for secretary of state. Nearly every story about him mentioned the case. Editorial boards urged voters not to choose him, casting the $135,000 he awarded as excessive. Similar cases in Colorado and Washington had concluded with negligible fines — and with virtually no political heat.
The Kleins were heroes to the American Taliban, proclaimed as True Believers and hailed as brave warriors in the fight against the homosexual agenda and persecution of those who wanted nothing more than to worship their God. Except that is was never about that, not really. Once the lawyers and Conservative pundits became involved, it became difficult, in some instances virtually impossible, for the Bowman-Cryers to live anything resembling normal lives. All they wanted was to be treated fairly and raise their children. The Kleins were quite happy to be seen as martyrs as long as the checks kept rolling in.
Of course, not everyone was using their case for their own personal aggrandizement. Sometimes it seemed the Bowman-Cryers were the only ones NOT realizing benefits from their case. Brad Avakian is running for Secretary of State in Oregon, which means that virtually every story about him from now until- and probably after- Election Day will mention the Bowman-Cryers. Except for the Kleins and Bowman-Cryers, few would have any idea who Avakian is.
The Bowman-Cryers didn’t ask for any of it, yet so many people have felt empowered to weigh in and/or disparage them. That so many so-called “Christians” have directed hateful, bigoted messages at them illustrates just how little they truly understand- much less live- the teachings of Jesus Christ. The Kleins have turned their crusade into a money-making machine and are riding the wave of adulation and remuneration, while others use their “faith” to insult and threaten the Bowman-Cryers in ways that are in some cases too vile to describe.
More than anything, the Bowman-Cryers just want their lives back. They want to raise their children in peace without having to live in fear. They want to be able to love one another without the hateful messages from Christians wishing them death and suffering.
I’d challenge my readers to read the entire article. I think you’ll come to understand, as I have, just how much more to this story there is…and how thoroughly hateful and disgusting some so-called “Christians” can be.
Three-plus years of aggravation and heartache…all because the Bowman-Cryers wanted to buy a wedding cake…only to ultimately learn that it was never about the cake. Or Christian love and charity.
