Small Portland Oregon Bakery gets Fined $135,000 for Refusing to Bake a Cake! – Just One More Injustice in a Long Line of Progressive Injustices.
on Saturday, April 25, 2015
Just One More Injustice in a Long Line of Progressive Injustices
Small Portland, OR. Bakery gets Fined $135K for Not Baking a Cake!
That’s What Liberals Call Justice in Oregon.
By Scott Rohter, April 2015
Aaron and Melissa Klein
Aaron and Melissa Klein were the owners of a small mom and pop bakery in Portland, Oregon. They were fined $135,000 for refusing to bake a cake for a gay “wedding ceremony”. The ruling came approximately two years after a woman and her daughter walked into their former Portland area store, Sweet Cakes by Melissa and wanted to order a cake with all of the appropriate decorations for what they called a “gay wedding”.
When it became apparent that in order to decorate the cake in the way that the prospective customers wanted, it would violate the Klein’s religious beliefs they respectfully declined to take the order or accept the customer’s money. It was their decision not to furnish the cake for the gay wedding ceremony that provided the basis for this lawsuit. At first an administrative law judge in Eugene, Oregon ordered the Kleins to pay emotional damages in the amount of $135,000 dollars to Laurel and Rachel Bowman-Cryer for a cake worth approximately $135. That is one thousand times the actual value of the cake. If that isn’t enough of an outrage, the owners of the bakery are Christians and they are being compelled by the State to do something that is against their religious beliefs. You don’t have to go to Saudi Arabia to see how badly Christians are treated. You can see it right here in our own country.
Upon learning of the court decision I was in a complete state of shock and disbelief that so grievous an injustice could be perpetrated upon the Kleins, but upon further reflection I realize it is an assault against the religious liberty of all Americans.
Plaintiffs Laurel and Rachel Bowman-Cryer
Portland and Eugene have become the center of everything that is perverse and twisted about our State. Legal decisions like the one handed down by Judge Alan McCullough are what we have come to expect from the hordes of activist judges who have been appointed to fill every judicial post in the State from Circuit Court to the Supreme Court by Democrat politicians over the past thirty years. These judicial activists have made some of the most preposterous legal decisions in order to facilitate their progressive agenda. Compelling the Kleins to pay $135,000 in damages for refusing to bake a cake valued at $135 is just the most recent example. It could have been overturned by the State Labor Commissioner, Brad Avakian, but it wasn’t. He is a Democrat too. Maybe if the Kleins would get down on their knees and beg forgiveness for being Christians then Commissioner Avakian would look more kindly on them.
Brad Avakian
The court’s decision to order the Kleins to pay $135,000 is a violation of their First Amendment Right to freedom of religion. It also violates the Eighth Amendment which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment or the imposition of excessive fines, but this is exactly what many Oregonians have come to expect from the Democrats who have controlled our State government for nearly three decades.When you turn over the reins of government to Democrats they inevitably create the perfect conditions for such imaginative interpretations of the law to survive.
I can think of several ways in which the two parties to this insignificant little dispute about a cake could have been amicably resolved without resorting to legal loggerheads, but of course this lawsuit is not about justice. It is about instilling fear into the hearts of every God fearing Christian in America.
Every customer has a right to shop wherever they want or not to shop wherever they want. Every business owner has exactly the same rights to provide goods and services or not to provide goods and services to whomever they want for whatever reason they want. We are all supposed to be free agents operating in a free market. The government has absolutely no business compelling anyone to shop anywhere or any business owner to serve anyone for any reason.
Corroborating Source Material
