Gresham Bakery Must Pay $135,000 for Discriminating Against Lesbian Couple

"This case is not about a wedding cake or a marriage. It is about a business's refusal to serve someone because of their sexual orientation."

Discriminatory baker Melissa Klein, remembering the days of frosting fights

Well, it's officially official.

According to the final ruling by the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries, Gresham bakery Sweet Cakes by Melissa broke state law when it refused to serve a cake to a lesbian couple in February 2013, and owners Aaron and Melissa Klein must pay $135,000 to the victims of their discrimination.  

In a strongly worded final order, BOLI writes:

The final order can be read, in part, as a response to a bewildering editorial by the conservative-leaning Oregonian in which it decried the BOLI decision while it was still under review, dubbing BOLI as "cake crusaders" and writing that the Kleins' unlawful discrimination against the gay couple was "not a grand act of lawlessness that merits a virtual death sentence." (Sample comment: "So small businesses should have their lawbreaking made affordable?") 

From the BOLI order: 

The Oregonian did not issue a similar editorial in the Engel case—in fact, a recent article dinged Engel for not paying up sooner in a piece that also made note of a great number of other six-figure BOLI rulings as a result of discrimination or harassment.

Meanwhile, the Kleins have resorted to crowdfunding to pay their fees, but were kicked off of crowdsourcing site GoFundMe because of, you know, hate crimes—although not until after they had already received $109,000 in donations. ("Satan's really at work," commented the Kleins about GoFundMe.) 

After the historic Supreme Court ruling June 26 granting same-sex couples the right to wed across the entire United States, the Kleins wrote on their Facebook page:

Apparently by "erosion of freedom", they somehow mean that a large portion of the country is now free to marry. Huh.

Anyway, the bakery is closed, and Aaron Klein now works as a garbage man, according to a propaganda video issued on the Kleins' behalf by a conservative blog, on which Melissa Klein cries a lot. It's worth a view just for that. 

The full text of the BOLI ruling is here. Through their lawyer, the Bowman-Cryers released a statement about the ruling, which we quote here in part:

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