Matt Walsh:
Dear Oregon Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian,
Captain of the Oregon Thought Police Division, Head Appropriate Beliefs Enforcer, Lord Chancellor of Acceptable Opinions, Minister of Tolerance, greetings and salutations.
I’ve been closely following the case of Aaron and Melissa Klein, the depraved fugitive cowards who committed the capital offense of WPH (Withholding Pastries from Homosexuals), and have been attempting to evade justice ever since.
As you know, it all started when a lesbian couple came to their bakery, Sweet Cakes by Melissa, back in 2013 looking for a wedding cake. They’d been served by Sweet Cakes many times before, but only ran into a problem on this one occasion. Apparently, the Kleins are Christians. Not just any Christians, but that peculiar type who actually believe in, and try to follow, the moral commandments of their religion. How dare they?
Their faith, I’m told, explicitly condemns the homosexual act as sinful, and even more explicitly defines marriage as a covenant between man and woman. This is the kind of radical, rebellious idea that could only be held by the most insane sorts of people. Naturally, the vast majority of human beings currently living on the planet, and almost everyone who ever lived anywhere on the planet prior to the 2000s, are and were insane. For thousands of years, the world was populated by maniacs who didn’t understand the truth of marriage until modern American liberals came along to explain it to them.
In any case, the owners declined to make the cake because it would constitute indirect participation in the celebration of a gay marriage, which they consider an abominable sin. According to Google, there are dozens of other bakeries and grocery stores within a few miles of what was once Sweet Cakes Bakery. The homosexual women could have gone to any of those other locations and been served without a problem. Aaron and Melissa were not universally depriving them of a cake, they were just depriving them of a cake baked by Aaron and Melissa. Did the women have a God given right to a cake baked by Aaron and Melissa? Yes. Obviously.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and Baked Goods From Aaron and Melissa Klein in Gresham, Oregon.” — The Declaration of Independence, 1776
Despite suffering such a severe persecution, the lesbians did manage to recover from their injuries enough to procure a cake from somewhere else and have their wedding anyway. But, thankfully, they first made sure to contact the government and alert the public about the oppression they’d just experienced, thus all but destroying Aaron and Melissa’s worthless, bigoted, cake-denying lives. Soon, the Kleins were facing legal repercussions and protests from angry liberals. It wasn’t long before they had to shut down their brick and mortar location. All of the hard work and sacrifice it required to open and operate their own store was summarily thrown to the side because two lesbians were offended. This is called proportional justice.
As the head of the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries, you were judge and jury on the case. They still haven’t had their day in an actual court, but that didn’t stop you from announcing a verdict this past week,declaring the couple has to shell out $135,000. If they don’t pay up, they could face a lien on their home. In your infinite compassion, you decided not to send them straight to the guillotine for their offenses, as they no doubt deserve, electing only to bankrupt them and threaten them with homelessness. Your mercy knows no bounds.
Melissa and Aaron Klein (Sweet Cakes By Melissa/Samaritan’s Purse)Some in the conservative sphere have impugned your integrity, claiming your decision couldn’t possibly be impartial when you have taken such great pains to advertise your partiality. Indeed, shortly before you handed down this declaration of guilt, you squealed with delight on Twitter about the recent “victory for marriage equality” at the Supreme Court, and made sure to wish everyone a “happy Pride weekend.” Like the Bible makes its position on homosexuality clear, you made your own just as plain. And then you went and fined a Christian couple $135,000 for disagreeing with you.
Ah, but this is America, where expressly partisan bureaucrats can decide whether business owners get to utilize their First Amendment rights. Certainly someone has to control the beliefs and thoughts of the masses, and who better than hyper-biased politicians?
