Marjorie Silva Won't Bake A 'God Hates Fags' Cake

We’ve heard all the stories of florists who don’t want to sell flowers for two grooms getting married, and bakeries that won’t make cakes for same-sex-couples, but this is a new twist.

Marjorie Silva, owner of the Azucar Bakery in Denver will bake a cake for any occasion, for anyone, gay or straight or whatever. Until recently.

See, an older man came into her store one day and said he wanted a cake shaped to look like the Bible, and Silva said that was not a problem; she says she makes Christian-themed cakes "all the time” but this one was so different.

The man, when telling Silva what he wanted, took out a piece of paper with the words he wanted written on the cake, but he would not hand it over. One of the employees said he wanted them to write “God Hates fags” on the cake.

“He wouldn’t allow me to make a copy of the message, but it was really hateful. I remember the words detestable, disgrace, homosexuality, and sinners.”—Marjorie Silva

Still, Marjorie, to her credit, said she’d bake it, with a caveat ... she would not write those words on the cake but would “sell him a [decorating] bag with the right tip and the right icing so he could write those things himself.” She says she would have been devastated to release a cake with such a hateful message fashioned by her own hands.

And that’s when the man stood up, told her that she needed to talk to her attorney, and left.

Hmmm, I smell a set-up. And lo and behold, a few hours later, the man came back and asked if she’d conferred with her lawyer; she told him she was busy and didn’t have time, but once more offered to bake the Bible cake and sell him the tools to complete the task himself but that is clearly not what he wanted. She says, though no one raised their voice, the man was creating a scene and she asked him to leave, which he did.

Then he came back again — the third time in one day — and this time Marjorie asked her brother to excuse him, but before he left, he told Marjorie, and her staff, “You will hear from me!”

And she did, via a letter filed with Colorado’s Department of Regulatory Agencies [DORA] that explained that a discrimination complaint had been filed against the bakery and that she would need to respond with her account of what happened that afternoon:

“I can … tell you that the customer wanted us to draw two males holding hands … with a big ‘X’ on them. I told him that we do not like to discriminate in this bakery, we accept all humans and that the message and drawing is extremely rude.”

Marjorie admits to being confused as to why the man chose her bakery, but said it might have had something to do with a pro-marriage-equality statement she gave to a Spanish-speaking news outlet after the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision; that’s the case where the Colorado Civil Rights Commission upheld a judge’s ruling that a Lakewood bakery was guilty of discrimination when the owners refused to bake cakes for gay weddings.

Marjorie suspects the man might have been organizing the backlash and using her shop to stage his protest, but she adds, in her response to DORA:

“I would like to make it clear that we never refused service. We only refused to write and draw what we felt was discriminatory against gays. In the same manner we would not … make a discriminatory cake against Christians, we will not make one that discriminates against gays.”

DORA will make a decision 30 days from receipt of Marjorie’s final statement, but let me make this perfectly queer: asking someone to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple is nothing like asking someone to bake a Bible cake with “God Hates Fags” on it.

One cake celebrates love, the other celebrates hate.

And possibly tastes terrible, too.

via NCRM and OutFront

Photo of the Week

During the holidays, a Gay Couple came home to find a rather nasty slur scratched into their door, beneath their shimmering, glittering wreath, but instead of fighting hate with hate, they decided it might be best to teach the little bastards vandals a lesson into how to make their hate scrawls a little prettier.

I love it!

It Was A Hate Crime

I’m sure by now you’ve all seen, or at least heard about, that airport incident, where an apparently drunken white man attacked a black man, while calling him a n****r over and over again. The whole episode was caught on a cellphone camera—as is everything these days—and was posted to YouTube where it went viral.

The attacker was tackled by bystanders in the airport, and taken down while screaming about “f*****g n****r” and was subsequently arrested and charged with a Hate Crime.

Except it didn’t happen that way, though maybe if it did …

At the Dallas airport that day McCleish Christmas Benham was drunk, very drunk; when a gate agent asked him if he’d had any alcohol, Benham cursed at her, saying, “Yes, 100 drinks.” A man standing nearby heard the exchange and told Benham to calm down, that the police were on their way, and that’s when Benham turned his rage on that young man.

He was asked again to relax, and when another passenger asked why he was so angry, Benham pointed to the first young man and said, "This faggot right here."

Then Benham kicked the man in the groin, punched him in the eye, and hit him on the head before he was tackled by five onlookers and an airport police officer. While he was being taken to the ground, he continued to yell, "Queers! That's what I'm upset about."

Now, while this sickens me, and while I wonder why it took so long for airport security to respond, because the minute you take too long taking your shoes off at TSA you’re surrounded by security, I am stunned to learn that Benham will only face charges of simple assault and public intoxication; each carries a maximum fine of $500 and no jail time. 

But there doesn’t seem to be any move to charge him with a Hate Crime, though, to be fair, local police have not yet indicated whether they will file hate-crime charges against Benham; if they did, Benham could be charged with a Class-B misdemeanor, punishable by a maximum $2,000 fine and up to 180 days in jail.

In addition he might also face separate charges under the federal Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act, though it seems that hate crime charges can be difficult to prove when an assailant is under the influence of drugs or alcohol. 

Okay, I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: if that drunk man had punched and kicked the other man because he was a belligerent drunk, that’s hateful; but when he punches, kicks, and hits, while calling the man a “queer” and a “faggot” that’s Hate.

I mean, if that first part of the story were true if he’d called a black passenger a “n****r” and attacked him, we’d know right away it’s a Hate Crime; there’d be no discussion. But since this was, perhaps, because we don’t even know, a gay victim, well, we can’t be sure it was Hate.

I’m here to say it was Hate; it is Hate; and it will be Hate. And when a lawyer, when asked about hate crimes laws says that would be difficult to prove because Benham was drunk, well, then you’ve just given people their out: get drunk, attack a queer, and it won’t be considered hate because you’re intoxicated.

Now that’s hateful.

The Star-Telegram

The Advocate

An Open Letter to Melissa and Aaron Klein

Dear Melissa and Aaron, 

Sit down. And shut up. The more you talk and kvetch and moan and play the Poor Me card the more you sound like hateful homophobes and bigots and small-minded, narrow-minded, close-minded, no minded fools.

That said, let me backtrack in case anyone has forgotten who you are: you’re the Oregon baker who refused to bake a wedding cake for Rachel Cryer and Laurel Bowman’s same-sex wedding because God. You know, because God handed down that Eleventh Commandment Thou Shalt Not Bake Cakes For Queer Weddings. Or something.

And then the couple you inflicted your bigotry upon sued, and you whined some more about God and Jesus and how, in your Bible, hate and homophobia are accepted, until the state of Oregon said what I said at the beginning of this letter: sit down and shut up … and bake that cake.

But you still refused so you decided to cut off your nose to spite your face and close the doors to your shop, and create your Bigot Baked Goods in your own home so you can still spread the hate; and keep talking and kvetching and whining and moaning.

I mean, how else do we explain your appearance — a freaking’ cake decorator — at the Values Voter Summit [VVS], AKA Hate The Gays Summit? And for those who don’t know, the VVS is listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group because, well, it is a hate group.

And poor Melissa, so distraught over being asked to perform a service for which her business was created, to bake a cake, began weeping as she talked about how her rights were violated and how much she misses talking to straight couples about their weddings:

“For me personally when I would sit down with them I just would want to know everything about her wedding. I'd want to know about the flowers, her dress, the centerpieces, her colors, the way her hair is going to be. I would even want to talk about 'where are you going on your honeymoon?'"

And you can’t do that with a gay couple? And, well, even if you could, what business is it of yours to stick your nose into other’s business? You are asked to bake a cake, not interview me and ask me about my wedding; you are to bake a cake, for which you will be paid, and with that money you can live your life and keep hating. But instead, you decide to deny a gay couple’s request for pastries and shutter your business and then take to the road on a Pity Party Tour.

You’re an idiot, Melissa, if you don’t see that refusing to bake a cake, i.e. do your job, for a same-sex couple is not at all different from running the Woolworth lunch counter in the South back in the middle of last century and telling Blacks that they can’t eat there because, well, again, God didn’t want Blacks and Whites sittin’ next to each at lunch.

You don’t see that; all you see is a same-sex couple and that’s just disgusting. But I’m done with you, Melissa, because you don’t get it, you won’t get it, and one day, in the very near future, you will be an asterisk in the march toward marriage equality; an asterisk leading to the story about the idiot baker who shut her doors rather than bake a cake for gay couple. One day, in the very near future, and long after that, people will giggle at how ridiculous you were, and probably still are.

And now, for you, Aaron, and what you said at the VVS:

“To be told they’re going to force me to convey a message other than what I want to convey — it flies in the face of the Constitution. It’s a violation of my conscience. It’s a violation of my religious freedom. It’s horrible to see your own government doing this to you….We had to shut the shop down. Melissa does very limited cakes out of our house. I mean we're facing in excess of $150,000 of damages for this, just for simply standing by my first amendment rights."

First off: you were not being told to convey a message; you were asked to bake a cake. And you were not asked to condone the wedding, go to the wedding, sing at the wedding, dance at the wedding, drink at the wedding, or even eat the freaking cake at the wedding. You were asked to do a job for which you opened a public business.

And if it’s cost you $150,000 that’s just a small price to pay for being allowed to be a bigot and run around the country and complain to a group of like-minded bigots and homophobes.

And them after your appearance at HateFest, you took to Facebook to continue talking about Poor You, and you decided to use anti-gay activist Rick Warren’s “Two Huge Lies” lie in your post:

“Our culture has accepted 2 huge lies. The first is that if you disagree with someone’s lifestyle, you must fear or hate them. Second is that to love someone means that you must agree with everything they believe or do. Both are nonsense. You don’t have to compromise convictions to be compassionate.”

First off, it isn’t a lifestyle, and if you think it is a lifestyle, first go get a dictionary and look up the word, and then explain to me what the ‘heterosexual’ lifestyle is. What this is, what being gay is, is a sexual orientation, just like being straight, only we are attracted to members of our own gender. It’s not a lifestyle, it’s a life, so, when you’re done whining, stop spreading that lie.

Secondly, no one, no one, least of all Rachel and Laurel are asking that you agree with them, or love them; we’re just asking you to bake a cake, get paid for it, and then shut up.

Seriously. Shut up. People are already finding you two ludicrous and it’ll only get worse from here on out. Imagine your grandchildren opening a history book — or, by then it’ll probably be a history app — and finding your names listed as being anti-gay, anti-equality. Imagine your grandchildren laughing about that.

Gosh, what were they thinking? It was just a cake?

Just a cake.

Sincerely,

Bob and Carlos

Gay and getting married. get used to it.

Dan Page? That's Who Was Sent In To Help In Ferguson?

After Darren Wilson murdered Michael Brown in the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, and after the public began to march and to protest and to, yes, push back against a police force seemingly out of control, Dan Page of the St. Louis Police Department was sent in to help maintain order; to protect and serve.

And, as I’ve said before, I believe most police officers are out there doing the right thing, but sadly Dan Page is not one of them, which was revealed after a video surfaced of Page pushing CNN reporter Don Lemon, and others, who were marching in Ferguson.

So, Page garnered a little bit of fame or notoriety, and with that came the inevitable Google searches, and other stories about Dan Page and the kind of police officer, and human being, he truly seems to be. And that video has led to Page’s being removed from his post and will likely start yet another investigation into another police department.

That video, posted to YouTube, shows Dan Page speaking to a group called the Oath Keepers, a "non-partisan association of current and formerly serving military, police, and first responders who pledge to fulfill the oath all military and police take to 'defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.'"

Well, that sounds good, right? Except it isn’t the Constitution of the United Sates Dan Page and Oath Keepers eek to defend, it’s some kind of warped, lying Teabagging version of the Constitution.

But here’s what Page said in his speech:

• He talked about what he describes as a draft replacement for the U.S. Constitution.
• He talked about the "four sodomites on the Supreme Court."
• He talked about a visit to Kenya "to our undocumented President's home."
• He refers to Barack Obama as "that illegal alien who claims to be our President."
• He says of Muslims: “They will kill you.”
• He says of domestic disputes: "You don't like each other that much, just kill each other and get it over with. Problem solved. Get it done."
• He says of Muslims: "They will kill you."
• He says of urban violence: “[W]hen the inner cities start to ignite, people are going to start killing people they don't like."
• And he finishes up with this: "I personally believe the Lord Jesus Christ is my savior, but I'm also a killer. I've killed a lot and, if I need to, I will kill a whole bunch more. … If you don't want to get killed, don't show up in front of me."

That’s just one of the men sent in to quell the violence, to keep the peace, to protect and serve, in Ferguson; a man who brags about killing; a man who believe the solution to domestic violence is for both parties to kill themselves; a man who paints all Muslims with the terrorist brush.

Luckily Page has been removed from duty after this video appeared, but it makes me wonder just who is his replacement and how does he feel on these same topics? If the new guy is even a shade of the old guy, there is no 'protect and serve.' There is just a kill or be killed mentality, and that’s what started this whole mess in the first place.

You can’t fight murder with murder, hate with hate, and intolerance with more intolerance. We need to investigate those men and women who are permitted to carry arms in our cities; those men and women whose job it is to protect us. We need to know that they are protecting America, and Americans, all Americans, equally and fairly, and not working towards their own bent agenda.

When will we learn? 

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