Oregon Bakers Found Guilty - for Act of Conscience

This is a follow-up to three posts (along with ones treating similar cases) at bottom.


There can no longer be any doubt that our nation has devolved into a full-blown Orwellian state.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/01/21/christian-bakery-guilty-violating-civil-rights-lesbian-couple/

"The owners of a Christian bakery who refused to make a wedding cake for a lesbian couple are facing hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines after they were found guilty of violating the couple’s civil rights."

[They did not even have the benefit of an actual trial. A regulatory body handed down the decision]

"The Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries said they found “substantial evidence” that Sweet Cakes by Melissa discriminated against the lesbian couple and violated the Oregon Equality Act of 2007, a law that protects the rights of the LGBT community.

Last year, the bakery’s owners refused to make a wedding cake for Rachel Cryer and Laurel Bowman, of Portland, citing their Christian beliefs. The couple then filed a complaint with the state.

“The investigation concludes that the bakery is not a religious institution under the law and that the business’ policy of refusing to make same-sex wedding cakes represents unlawful discrimination based on sexual orientation,” said Charlie Burr, a spokesman for the Bureau of Labor and Industries..........

The family eventually had to close their retail shop and now operate the bakery out of their home...............................

Under state law, the complaint against the bakery now moves into a period of reconciliation. If they can’t reach an agreement, formal civil charges could be filed and the Kleins could face hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines."

[Note the following. This is the closest thing to the practice of groups such as the Khmer Rouge that required prisoners to come forward, admit their bourgeois behavior, and accept reeducation that I have seen in this nation] 

"Last August, Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian told The Oregonian, their desire is to rehabilitate businesses like the one owned by the Christian couple.“Everybody is entitled to their own beliefs, but that doesn’t mean that folks have the right to discriminate,” he told the newspaper. “The goal is never to shut down a business. The goal is to rehabilitate.”

Aaron Klein told me there will be no reconciliation and there will be no rehabilitation. He and his wife will not back down from their Christian beliefs.

“There’s nothing wrong with what we believe,” he said. “It’s a biblical point of view. It’s my faith. It’s my religion.”..........
“I’ve never seen a government entity use a law to come after somebody because they have a religious view,” he said. “I truly believe Brad Avakian is trying to send a message. I don’t think the constitution of the state of Oregon means anything to these people.”

No degree of special legal protection that prohibits discrimination can be understood to override the very basic right of religious freedom of conscience.   

Like others mentioned in the links below, the Klein's were faced with a very simple dilemma - submit to avoid fines, lawsuits, and loss of one's means of earning a living, or do the right thing and gently (and as previous posts note this was certainly how it was done) inform the gay or lesbian couple that they would be unable to (in this case) make a wedding cake for an event that ran contrary to their beliefs. 

The radicals have taken control of much of our nation. Failing to engage in a conversation about a coworker's gay marriage, or politely declining to perform a service for a gay wedding (or anniversary) is now cause for closing up shop or giving up your job. In the USSR, you were sent to the gulag. In the US, you won't go to jail but you will be financially ruined. 

The act of providing a service for any event requires a degree of cooperation with that event. I am a Catholic, and as such one cannot discriminate against me. Unlike Catholics, Orthodox, and Mainline Protestants, Evangelical Christians do not allow for the baptism of infants. If I desired a cake or other service for the baptism party for my newborn, and the Evangelical vendor felt that filling that order would violate his beliefs, I would not have the gall to make a complaint. 

This is, however, an society that is truly Orwellian at both the governmental level and - even more frighteningly, at the grass-roots level. A dissident in the Soviet Union or East Germany could at least have a small circle of friends around whom he could make known the fact that he was not happy with the current state of affairs, even if this meant simply keeping conspicuously quiet. In our society, you have more to fear from a complaint or retaliatory vandalism from an angry gay radical than you do from the cops. 

Even attending a party is problematic.The person of conscience has to remain fearful that the wrong topic will come up in conversation - one that will at some point be directed at him for a required response. Forget saying anything that  is not approved by the radicals; the very act of politely noting that you prefer not to comment will likely bring a pack of jackals around you As the angry accusations are leveled at you and the fingers are being pointed close to your face, the desire to refrain from ruining the event for everyone will act as a braking mechanism to what you may want to say to defend yourself (and you are not defending your position, but your own beliefs - who you are), but the radicals will only be emboldened by your sense of decorum. In the end, you may well decide to avoid such gatherings to avoid finding yourself in similar situations. I once faced vicious verbal attacks simply because I declined to provide input on the sickening phenomena of the growing of human embryos to make life easier for those of us who were fortunate enough not to have been grown for the gruesome purpose of harvesting. 

Again, I see no viable option other than to effect a political  break of my beloved republic. There are two utterly different types of people in the United States, and one will not allow any amount of compromise. They want nothing less than your complete Islamic-like submission to their way of doing things.


http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2013/02/baker-refuses-cake-for-fake-wedding.html

http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-mob-shuts-down-bakery-but-are-not.html

http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2013/12/baker-ordered-by-judge-to-serve-gay.html



http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2013/04/washington-state-sues-florist-for-gay.html

http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2013/06/lawsuits-fines-jail-for-ones-principles.html

http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2013/08/photographer-found-to-violate-human.html

http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2013/05/doj-mandating-employees-to-talk-about.html