Anti gay Cake Makers Sent Cakes to LGBT Orgs
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Oregon bakers Aaron and Melissa Klein and their children stand over their a batch of cakes they made that were then sent to nearly a dozen LGBT centers in Southern California. |
This is what you might call just desserts.
An agency that runs an LGBT center in Southern California found a more tasteful way to utilize the not-so-sweet cake that was cooked up and delivered by a pair of bakers in Gresham, Ore., who got burnt by their opposition to gay marriage.
Equality California fed the cake they received in the mail from the former owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa to homeless children at a Los Angeles shelter.
“I know they said it’s not a publicity stunt, but it sure looks like one,” Equality California spokesman Jason Howe told the Daily News.
The group’s employees anticipated the cake's arrival and opened a box to find it iced with what appeared to be a friendly message:
"We really do love you," read the message on the now-devoured cake.
The dry-iced delivery came replete with an Olive Garden gift card and a film known as “Audacity” that has been perceived by critics as homophobic. It was released in June by Christian evangelist Ray Comfort.
Instead of consuming the cake at their office, the folks at Equality California drove it over to Midnight Mission on Skid Row.
The former owners of the bakery business are Melissa and Aaron Klein, the couple who were ordered to pay up about $150,000 to a lesbian couple after they refused to bake their wedding cake, citing religious-based objections.
Melissa and her husband shuttered the bakery at the end of 2013, but continued taking private orders from clients such as an anti-gay ministry known as Restored Hope Network.
They said they baked up the cakes and sent them out this week to “express our love for (gay people) as Christians,” Melissa Klein said in an email to the Oregonian. “We don’t hate them.”
The couple stood alongside their children and posed above the 10 cakes they shipped to groups listed by the Daily Signal as California LGBT Arts Alliance, Asian and Pacific Islander Wellness Center, Californians Against Hate, CFAC Headquarters, Equality California, Out and Equal, The South Bay LGBT Community Organization, The LGBTQ Center Long Beach, Los Angeles LGBT Center McDonald/Wright Building and LGBT of Southern Nevada.
THE DAILY SIGNALThe cakes came with a message that said, "We really do love you," and a film that has been perceived as homophobic.
Without any knowledge of this week’s stunt, the outlier group in Nevada, the Gay and Lesbian Center of Southern Nevada in Las Vegas, sliced into its own cake when it arrived on Thursday afternoon.
“We were cautious about doing it, but laughed if we should try or sample the cake. Was this a spoof?” the group’s CEO, Michael Dimengo, said.
The former Catholic priest said he and his colleagues ultimately “feasted on the cake.”
“I looked at it as a good gesture when they said it was loving, but I also looked at it with skepticism, as propaganda," Dimengo added.
One of the cakes arrived at the Long Beach center in not the best of shape and went straight into the garbage can.
“Unfortunately the dry ice did not hold up. Our cake looked a little different than it was supposed to,” the center’s executive director, Porter Gilberg, told The News.
Gilberg commended the Kleins for at least taking the time to reach out and in an email to the couple, Gilberg invited the bakers to stop by the LGBT center during their next Long Beach visit.
“I think one of the most difficult things for folks to do is to reach out to people who have a different belief especially when it comes to LGBTQ people,” Gilberg said. “We did not expect to receive a cake from the folks in Oregon.”
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