Not only were the Kleins fined $135,000 for the “emotional distress” they caused a lesbian couple when the Kleins declined to bake a cake, when the Kleins expressed their opinion on the case in an interview, Oregon Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian ordered them to “cease and desist” from ever talking about not providing same-sex weddings cakes.
Oregon Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian finalized a preliminary ruling today ordering Aaron and Melissa Klein, the bakers who refused to make a cake for a same-sex wedding, to pay $135,000 in emotional damages to the couple they denied service.
“This case is not about a wedding cake or a marriage,” Avakian wrote. “It is about a business’s refusal to serve someone because of their sexual orientation. Under Oregon law, that is illegal.”
In the ruling, Avakian placed an effective gag order on the Kleins, ordering them to “cease and desist” from speaking publicly about not wanting to bake cakes for same-sex weddings based on their Christian beliefs.
“This effectively strips us of all our First Amendment rights,” the Kleins, owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa, which has since closed, wrote on their Facebook page. “According to the state of Oregon we neither have freedom of religion or freedom of speech.”
Oregon Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian finalized a preliminary ruling today ordering Aaron and Melissa Klein, the bakers who refused to make a cake for a same-sex wedding, to pay $135,000 in emotional damages to the couple they denied service.
“This case is not about a wedding cake or a marriage,” Avakian wrote. “It is about a business’s refusal to serve someone because of their sexual orientation. Under Oregon law, that is illegal.”
In the ruling, Avakian placed an effective gag order on the Kleins, ordering them to “cease and desist” from speaking publicly about not wanting to bake cakes for same-sex weddings based on their Christian beliefs.
“This effectively strips us of all our First Amendment rights,” the Kleins, owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa, which has since closed, wrote on their Facebook page. “According to the state of Oregon we neither have freedom of religion or freedom of speech.”
The cease and desist came about after Aaron and Melissa Klein participated in an interview with Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins. During the interview, Aaron said among other things, “This fight is not over. We will continue to stand strong.”
Lawyers for plaintiffs, Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer, argued that in making this statement, the Kleins violated an Oregon law banning people from acting on behalf of a place of public accommodation (in this case, the place would be the Kleins’ former bakery) to communicate anything to the effect that the place of public accommodation would discriminate. […]
The Kleins’ lawyer, Anna Harmon, was shocked by the provision.
“Brad Avakian has been outspoken throughout this case about his intent to ‘rehabilitate’ those whose beliefs do not conform to the state’s ideas,” she told The Daily Signal. “Now he has ruled that the Kleins’ simple statement of personal resolve to be true to their faith is unlawful. This is a brazen attack on every American’s right to freely speak and imposes government orthodoxy on those who do not agree with government sanctioned ideas.”
And that is the whole point.
It occurs to me that with all the stuff I’ve stocked up on, I really don’t have much in the way of rope.
Wire works fine.
I wonder if you could mount a successful campaign for state office in Oregon on a platform of somebody needs to fire Brad Avakian’s ass.
Anyone know of a defense fund for them? I’ll chip in. The gag order is unConstitutional and I hope they or someone on their behalf takes it up the ladder. I think the fine is similarly unsupportable. And Ernst is right….
The Insty thread for this article has superseded 200 comments exclusive because Bill Quick saying, in essence, those awful Christers deserve it.
Then other morons “report” his comments so that the “reply” button disappears.
As for a defense fund, Tracy, I don’t know. When people tried to raise money for Memories Pizza, gofundme shut them down.
Apparently, fundraising for h8rs is beyond the pale.
Oregon Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian
LABOR COMMISSIONER???
A freaking LABOR COMMISSIONER did this? Not the DA or anyone with actual, you know, authority?
:: spit ::
Did a quick Google search, went four pages in without finding anything, remembered that it was GOOGLE (on Chrome) and switched to DuckDuckGo over Pale Moon.
I couldn’t find any legal funds specific to the Kleins.
Samaritan’s Purse is Billy Graham’s (now his son Franklin Graham’s) org, which is not strictly legal but does fund religious liberty defense: http://www.samaritanspurse.org/article/persecution-against-u-s-christians-on-the-rise/
Alliance Defending Freedom (aka Alliance Defense Fund), James Dobson’s org, takes on religious liberty cases: http://www.alliancedefendingfreedom.org/
There’s also Landmark Legal Foundation, Mark Levin’s org: http://www.landmarklegal.org/
I should note that with both search engines, the left-wing “watch” sites’ entries for “alliance defense fund” populated almost the entire front page, not the official page for the actual org.
That’s NAS-tay, search engines. Keep your childish manipulations to yourself.
The fruitless Google search I tried was “defense fund” “aaron and melissa klein”
That one produces almost exclusively articles denouncing GoFundMe’s torpedoing of the fundraising for them.
Yup. The New Media and the Internet works, people.
Just not for us.
[…] Darleen Click on Protein Wisdom: YOU WILL BE MADE TO CARE: Oregon couple ordered to shut up about same-sex wedding cakes […]
One could petition the ACLJ.
http://aclj.org/
Here’s what you’re looking for. https://www.continuetogive.com/4811392
82% of the $150K goal raised thus far.
I’ve never heard of Continue to Give. What do we know about them?
Description
The latest review by Crowdfunding-Website-Reviews has placed Christian crowdfunding site Continue to Give with a homepage placement and a 4+ star review. The team at Continue to Give has brought exceptional technologies to churches and non-profit fundraising efforts. They have gone beyond basic crowdfunding by incorporating QR codes, Facebook donation enabler and onsite kiosks bringing a major upgrade to church’s and missions ability to raise funds to continue to do their important work. Most impressive is their customer service supported by a boldly shown toll-free phone number (that actually gets answered. Something not often found on crowdfunding sites.
I’ve used WePay before and it works well. I dropped a few coins into their effort (Sweetcakes)
i refuse to give them one red cent
there’s way more needier people goodness gracious this one guy just got eated by an alligator
…and what about that poor man who inadvertantly mistook a powerful firework for a hat?
Though why decided to light his hat on fire is anybody’s guess.
poor man there but for the grace of god