'Ace of Cakes' Star Offers Wedding Cake to Lesbian turned down by Oregon

[superjaz]

Okay some of ya might know I am a bit of a foodie so this is extra cool to me
 So a Gresham bakery refused to make a wedding cake when he heard it was going to be for a gay couple and when
Duff Goldman heard about it he offered to make them a cake and to drive it up himself all the way from Baltimore for free!
full story
http://www.shewired.com/lifestyle/2013/02/04/ace-cakes-star-offers-wedding-cake-lesbian-couple-turned-away-oregon-bakery

Thats really cool and also it means if they take him up on it (aha if) then HE COULD BE IN TOWN....

for those who don't know him he is an AWESOME baker cake maker chef, had the shows "Ace of Cakes" and "Sugar High" and assorted other Food Network shows
 

[Washougal_Otaku]

That's pretty cool of him.  He should be called "Good Guy Goldman" now.


To be honest, though, I don't get why they couldn't have just gone to another bakery.  I also feel that the bakery had every right to deny them.  It's their bakery, and if they have this viewpoint, it should be respected instead of condemned, especially since it's religiously supported.  A person shouldn't have to make personal OR professional decisions that makes them compromise their beliefs.  If Oregon (not sure which department or whatever it is that this applies to) decides to punish the bakery for this, then the state will be guilty of violating Church & State.


I hope the couple enjoys their lives together.

[Darknight2433]

Under that logic, should any southern state's bakeries be allowed to turn down people from ethnic diversity?

Just food for thought. 

[Washougal_Otaku]

I think you're misunderstanding my logic, but I love the pun you've typed up.  I tip my hat to you.

[TalaRedWolf33]

Okies Wash, I totally see your point. But sadly, it is against state law. In 2007, Oregon passed the Oregon Equality Act, which  prohibits businesses from discriminating based on sexual orientation.  He could have just said no, saying they were booked for the season, or were short staffed and couldn't make it in time. Instead, he called them "abominations of God" and rudely declined to make them a cake, and is now under investigation. Its not his place, whether the business is his or not, to decline business to anyone based on their sexual choices. The way he handled this was overly wrong.
"'I believe that marriage is a religious institution ordained by God,' Klein (owner)." This statement does not, in any way, give him the right to decline these women business because HE does not see their union as ordained by God. Several same sex couples get married by ordained ministers in religious and religion based ceremonies, making their marriage "ordained" or "blessed" (or whatever it is that makes you feel better, I don't know all the terminology) by God. They are being married in their love of God, and in His light. In MY opinion, that makes their union ordained by God. He is there for them, and He is offering them His light and His love. That is all that matters.

[@random]

Just saw a followup article this morning... some smart-aleck reporter got the idea of calling to see if the bakery would make cakes for such occasions as divorce, successfully cloning human stem cells, or my favorite - a pagan solstice (complete with a pentagram of icing). Nope, no issue. 

(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/30/sweet-cakes-by-melissa-oregon_n_3355314.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices)

[TalaRedWolf33]

Just saw a followup article this morning... some smart-aleck reporter got the idea of calling to see if the bakery would make cakes for such occasions as divorce, successfully cloning human stem cells, or my favorite - a pagan solstice (complete with a pentagram of icing). Nope, no issue. 

(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/30/sweet-cakes-by-melissa-oregon_n_3355314.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices)

I just read that one lol
I think its funny. He kinda screwed himself over.

[superjaz]

Ha that's hilarious!

funny enough I have made some pentagram chocolate(well Melty chips) covered peanut butter pretzels for my husbands birthday last year, I made him a Dresden files cake and the main character has a pentagram necklace.

[TalaRedWolf33]

Its so cute! That's such a cute cake. My mother in law makes cakes for us all the time, but that one is much cuter

[superjaz]

Thanks! I worked really hard on I, I would carve the car and zombie t-Rex and hid them in the veggie drawer where hubby wouldn't find them.  One problem tho, you know how cakes can have a big bubble sometimes? This one did, so I put a marshmallow and no one was the wiser

[Washougal_Otaku]

That is a fun-looking cake, Jaz!


@Tala - So is gay marriage.


Apparently, this was the main reason why they justified turning them down.  Of course, the partner (who wasn't even there!) didn't focus on that when she filed the complaint, and the media wanted to focus on the "homophobic" reason instead.

Also, had the Huffington Post done its research correctly, then they would have known that religion wasn't their only reason.  To add to it, many who hold to various denominations of Christianity (or any other religion) are open-minded enough to accept that others support things such as stem cell research, divorce (which isn't entirely out of Christianity), other religions, or the like.  These pranks really aren't that funny if people actually tried to think about what's going on, rather than sticking to the idea of belittling a business for doing what it felt was right.  Besides, they've done business with many members of the gay community, INCLUDING both members of the lesbian couple in question.

Again, where's the researching and integrity by these "journalists?"  I'll tell ya where they are: THEY DON'T EXIST!!!

[@random]

Maybe I'm just not understanding the nuances of the arguments... but it's hard for me to comprehend how allowing a couple of the same gender to marry does more harm to the sanctity of marriage than divorce. 

If his argument for why he should deny a couple service based on their sexuality isn't based on religion, then it's breaking the law. If it is based on religion, then YMMV on whether it breaks the law - but what sort of religion is based on forcing everyone to follow its precepts, not just those who adhere to it? And if his religion is based on forcing everyone to adhere to its precepts, then why is it that he has no trouble with making cakes for people breaking other precepts, especially when said religion explicitly condemns them (as opposed to only doing so implicitly)?

[superjaz]

Maybe I'm just not understanding the nuances of the arguments... but it's hard for me to comprehend how allowing a couple of the same gender to marry does more harm to the sanctity of marriage than divorce. 

My pet theory is the marriage statistics of heterosexual couples are not the best these days and with same gender marriage will add more data to be compared to, and it can only make look worse. 

[acton]

Maybe I'm just not understanding the nuances of the arguments... but it's hard for me to comprehend how allowing a couple of the same gender to marry does more harm to the sanctity of marriage than divorce. 

If his argument for why he should deny a couple service based on their sexuality isn't based on religion, then it's breaking the law. If it is based on religion, then YMMV on whether it breaks the law - but what sort of religion is based on forcing everyone to follow its precepts, not just those who adhere to it? And if his religion is based on forcing everyone to adhere to its precepts, then why is it that he has no trouble with making cakes for people breaking other precepts, especially when said religion explicitly condemns them (as opposed to only doing so implicitly)?

This line of argument is a red herring  fallacy. the baker is not discriminating because of sexual orientation but because of  behavior.  For example the  baker would had sold a cake to the  same  sex couple for any other reason. Second  it not  forcing  everybody to follow one religious precepts if a person  conscientiously  object providing or selling  a service or item based  on one's religious conviction because they are not imposing their rule on the larger community. Thus there is nothing different from a baker refusing to sell a cake to same sex couple, to  a Arabic (Halal)  or Kosher Jewish delicatessen refusing to sell pork items or a Mormon own store refusing to sell alcohol. 

[@random]

This line of argument is a red herring  fallacy. the baker is not discriminating because of sexual orientation but because of  behavior.  For example the  baker would had sold a cake to the  same  sex couple for any other reason. Second  it not  forcing  everybody to follow one religious precepts if a person  conscientiously  object providing or selling  a service or item based  on one's religious conviction because they are not imposing their rule on the larger community. Thus there is nothing different from a baker refusing to sell a cake to same sex couple, to  a Arabic (Halal)  or Kosher Jewish delicatessen refusing to sell pork items or a Mormon own store refusing to sell alcohol.

There's a great deal of difference between refusing to provide a good or service because the owner personally objects to it (i.e. a kosher deli refusing to sell pork) to any customers, and refusing to provide a good or service to a specific customer because the owner personally objects to them.

In the first case, the objection is to the good or service itself, and it would indeed be nonsensical to force people to provide goods or services they object to. But if the owner we're talking about had a religious objection to selling cakes, it's hard to imagine he would have opened a bakery.

In the second case, the objection is to the customer. If refusal of service is based on orientation, by Oregon law, that is not legal.

To address your assertion wrt behavior, that is in many cases a legitimate reason to refuse service. If the couple had come in and started using abusive language towards him, AFAIK he would have been well within his rights to refuse service regardless of their orientation. But in this case, the owner has never asserted that their behavior was the reason. The only grounds he has given, even from the most favorable standpoint, are that his religion considers sexual orientation to be a reason to refuse service. YMMV on whether his beliefs are a valid reason to break the law, or whether his freedom of religion ends where someone else's nose begins.

[Washougal_Otaku]

In the first case, the objection is to the good or service itself, and it would indeed be nonsensical to force people to provide goods or services they object to. But if the owner we're talking about had a religious objection to selling cakes, it's hard to imagine he would have opened a bakery.

In the second case, the objection is to the customer. If refusal of service is based on orientation, by Oregon law, that is not legal.

To address your assertion wrt behavior, that is in many cases a legitimate reason to refuse service. If the couple had come in and started using abusive language towards him, AFAIK he would have been well within his rights to refuse service regardless of their orientation. But in this case, the owner has never asserted that their behavior was the reason. The only grounds he has given, even from the most favorable standpoint, are that his religion considers sexual orientation to be a reason to refuse service. YMMV on whether his beliefs are a valid reason to break the law, or whether his freedom of religion ends where someone else's nose begins.

Once again, his issues were both.  Not only was religion a guideline (which by the law forcing him to make a cake against his religious preference is also illegal, even on a federal level), but the logic of gay marriage being illegal in Oregon was another source of his logic.  Again, based off of the first Oregonian article that actually asked him about it, he said that it was more about that law than his beliefs, but that they were part of what made him uncomfortable about it, as well as the complaint being launched by someone who WASN'T EVEN THERE!!!  The complaint should have been thrown out immediately at that point.

[Prinz Eugen]

So, what happens if I go to a butcher who keeps kosher, and ask him to compound for me a product which violates the sanctity of his religion. Can I force him to make blood sausage, just because other butchers around town make it?

More food for thought here:
http://www.redstate.com/2013/06/27/yes-you-will-be-made-to-care/

And therein lies a possible solution. I was around during the time the word 'gay' was expropriated from a general usage of 'cheerful' or 'brightly colored' to instead refer to a sexual orientation. The words 'wedding' and 'marriage' are now under a similar influence.

Perhaps what needs to happen is that traditional Christians could work to agree on new word which means (according to the religion) :
a. a lifelong commitment to a heterosexual relationship, and
b. the acknowledgement by the congregation that the two people may now engage in physical intimacy without said acts being seen as sinful within that church.
c. the acknowledgement that the children issuing from this relationship are in good spiritual standing with that church's rules and may participate in its rituals more completely than outsiders or illegitimate children (if that church has a rule like that.)

Then, for such a new word "[www]," the bakery can say, "No, we don't make wedding cakes, but we do make [www] cakes that come with one man and one woman figurine. If you want, you guys could buy two of our [www] cakes, move the figurines around yourselves to your liking, and discard the others..."

[@random]

I don't believe the baker has ever said he had a religious objection to making wedding cakes... if he did have a religious objection to making wedding cakes, he probably went into the wrong business.  His objection was to making one for a specific customer.

To try to make this fit the kosher analogy, no one did the equivalent of asking a kosher butcher to eat something non-kosher or make something non-kosher. They did the equivalent of asking him to make kosher goods (i.e. something to which he has no objection per se) for someone that he believed had no right to eat kosher goods.

~~~~~

The notion of creating a new word for wedding and/or marriage to specifically denote religious marriages is an interesting one. The biggest problem I can see, though, is that most religions can't even agree on the time of day... it's hard to imagine a group of them acquiescing to, let alone creating, a common definition of marriage.

[Prinz Eugen]

His objection was to making one for a specific customer.

Oh, I thought that the baker's objection was not the customer's proclivities, but rather an objection to physically placing two figurines of the same sex on a cake.

The kosher analogy would be that you have a religious person with a set of precursor materials which are innocuous in themselves, but which may be combined in some ways which his religion allows him to countenance, but other ways which are anathema to him. Mixtures of meat and cheese may better fit the kosher analogy. A vast majority of Americans have no hesitation about ordering a cheeseburger, but they are not kosher.

The thing here is that an illicit act may spiritually desecrate a volume of space to a religious practicant.
Here is the process in reverse: http://judaism.about.com/od/kosherdietarylaws/f/kosher_grill.htm

Catholic Masses also ritually sanctify a zone of space in advance of a special act to be performed there. If that zone is disrupted, the rite cannot proceed. (The Orthodox Mass includes the line "Guard the doors" going back to centuries past when intolerant pagans would attempt to disrupt the ritual, which is performed with a closed door between the priest and the congregation. Intolerant activists in this day and age have attempted to disrupt Roman Catholic Masses as well - even in the Portland Area.)   

So, might it be that the act of putting two figurines of the same sex on a cake may (for the religious baker) desecrate a volume of space and thereby be an illicit act for him? Your comments?

~~~~~

The notion of creating a new word for wedding and/or marriage to specifically denote religious marriages is an interesting one. The biggest problem I can see, though, is that most religions can't even agree on the time of day...

I remember a push by certain evangelical churches in the wake of "no-fault" divorce - an assault on a different traditional aspect of the definition of marriage: its permanent and irrevocable nature. They tried terms like 'covenant marriage' to denote a marriage that cannot (by the religion) be dissolved. (Or else what? Excommunication? Damnation? I don't know - my own personal religion is something else...) But you're right there again, there weren't enough people to agree on WHAT a 'covenant marriage' was / was not, and how to popularize and enforce the term.

[Ottery]

Duff is so awesome! He stopped by the Oregon Culinary Institute back in September of last year, and he acted so cool and chill.   

[Washougal_Otaku]

...again, gay marriage is illegal in Oregon, and that was the primary issue that the bakery had with the cake.  Why is everyone wanting to bash on this place because they believe in God?

The kosher analogy would be that you have a religious person with a set of precursor materials which are innocuous in themselves, but which may be combined in some ways which his religion allows him to countenance, but other ways which are anathema to him. Mixtures of meat and cheese may better fit the kosher analogy. A vast majority of Americans have no hesitation about ordering a cheeseburger, but they are not kosher.

To be more accurate, Guy, the term is parv.  Mammal meat and cheese are not parv, though poultry/fish and cheese are.

[@random]

Saw an article that reminded me of this thread: "In conservative Alabama, celebrating a 'God-written' union of man and woman."

Catholic Masses also ritually sanctify a zone of space in advance of a special act to be performed there. If that zone is disrupted, the rite cannot proceed. (The Orthodox Mass includes the line "Guard the doors" going back to centuries past when intolerant pagans would attempt to disrupt the ritual, which is performed with a closed door between the priest and the congregation. Intolerant activists in this day and age have attempted to disrupt Roman Catholic Masses as well - even in the Portland Area.)

Which is an incredible shame. There's no way to excuse trying to impose one's religion or lack thereof upon someone else, which is exactly what anyone trying to disrupt a Mass for such a reason would be doing.     

So, might it be that the act of putting two figurines of the same sex on a cake may (for the religious baker) desecrate a volume of space and thereby be an illicit act for him? Your comments?

It's possible, though to me your argument seems much more well-reasoned than anything I've yet heard from either side. To some extent, it depends on who you believe - the couple say he called them "abominations unto the Lord" as a reason for denying them service. His own choice of words ("I believe that marriage is a religious institution ordained by God. A man should leave his mother and father and cling to his wife ... that to me is the beginning of marriage.") when asked about it later leaves more room for this possibility, though it still seems to indicate that his objection was more likely to who was ordering the cake than it was to the figures on the cake.

...again, gay marriage is illegal in Oregon, and that was the primary issue that the bakery had with the cake.

If you have a source for this being the baker's primary issue, I'd be genuinely interested in seeing it. All I've been able to find are sound-bite size quotes that don't mention gay marriage being illegal in Oregon, and I'd like to think he was given a chance somewhere to clearly articulate what his reasoning was. For that matter, I'd also be interested in seeing a source that supports the assertion that it's "illegal" in Oregon, as opposed to "not legally recognized". The difference may sound quibbling, but it would hold weight in determining whether such an argument has any standing in a court of law.

Why is everyone wanting to bash on this place because they believe in God?

I don't believe that's even remotely what's taking place right now, even accepting the assertion of "because they believe in God" to be synonymous with "because he believes his God requires him to treat people differently based on who they want to marry." (Again, the difference may seem quibbling - but there's a world of difference between "believing in God" and "believing that God requires me to discriminate.")

[Washougal_Otaku]

As I've said before, it was in the original article done by the Oregonian, published in late February (I believe the date was the 26th...).


Even if my statement weren't an exaggeration (which of course it was) they never used their religion to discriminate.  If all they were going on was their religious beliefs, they would've been holding onto what that religion dictates; that's NOT the same thing as discriminating against gays, but holding onto the idea that marriage is a holy commitment with the one they love and want to start a family with.  By the standards of every religion on the planet, this can only be done with a member of the opposite gender, whether any religion is okay with homosexual acts or not.  This is why "gay marriage" hasn't existed ANYWHERE until recently.  Just because a family wishes to respect what their beliefs state, it doesn't mean that they are discriminating; that thought is a form of discrimination against them and the religion they represent.

[Prinz Eugen]

To be more accurate, Guy, the term is parv.  Mammal meat and cheese are not parv, though poultry/fish and cheese are.

Thanks for that clarification - I am not of that religion but while trying to explore an analogy, I am certainly trying to be as respectful as I can.

[Washougal_Otaku]

To be more accurate, Guy, the term is parv.  Mammal meat and cheese are not parv, though poultry/fish and cheese are.

Thanks for that clarification - I am not of that religion but while trying to explore an analogy, I am certainly trying to be as respectful as I can.

You're welcome!