answers to the gresham cake thingy
This week’s Willamette Week cover story answers a few questions about the Gresham Cake Controversy that had puzzled me… which, admittedly, if I were more curious I could easily look closer into at any point in the last couple years in court dispositions, etc.
The hinge for me is the difference between “creating” a piece of “Art”, ala Cake — which would allow the bakery to not stick a bride and bride on the top of the cake, and baking a cake, which would not allow the refusal of taking money from the couple in transaction for the cake.  It’s interesting. Religious Freedom Law as supported by liberals in the Clinton Administration to allow for tribal use of peyote now being pushed aside by strains of the dominate Christian faith as they face a secular public.
The next two hinges… one… apparently the personalities of the business owners is something like Archie and Ethel Bunker… the congenial and friendly wife not at all congenial and the husband narrow and doctrinaire in his bigoted opinions. Here they were lucky to have had business over the years with the wife. Notably as they move to becoming a cause celebre and in need of a counter market to the broad market they lost, the Christianist business owners now shuffle to the party line, the wife probably retro-fitting her past to fit the new reality.
The second hinge… I don’t know if I believe the couple that they tried to comment on the BBB but ended up accidentally commenting with a state bureau, but… the game continues. My sympathies for the couple have always been short-circuited by the fact that it is now a prerequisite in the Portland metro area for every bakery to have in their window the sticker “We don’t Discriminate Against Anyone” in the shape of Oregon, some words on Love, and that this leaves the Gresham bakery to a niche market (and granted, swarths of America it wouldn’t be a niche market, but even in most of America we’re getting to the point where someone SOMEWHERE is not going to deny their money.)