Arizona Evangelist Calls Florida Bakery For Anti-Gay Cake. Bakery Refuses. Gets Death Threats.

A former televangelist in Arizona posted a video of himself calling a Florida bakery asking for an anti-gay cake. Now the bakery owner says she is getting death threats from his supporters for refusing.

It seems fitting that former Arizona televangelist Joshua Feuerstein picked April 1 to call a bakery in Florida, asking them to bake an anti-gay cake. 

In a video he posted to YouTube that garnered over one million views, Feuerstein can be seen calling Cut The Cake bakery in Florida and telling owner Sharon Haller, “I need a sheet cake and I need it to say, ‘We do not support gay marriage.'”

In fact, Haller thought it was an April Fool’s Day joke, and asked him so.

Then she can be heard refusing.

“We wouldn’t do that. Sorry.”

That is the entire extent of the phone call, but for then next four minutes Feuerstein rails about “religious freedom,” as he tells his viewers the name and the location of the bakery and the name of the owner. “Call her yourself, ask her the same exact questions” he suggests to his viewers.

Raw Story reports Feuerstein “has referred to the video as a ‘social experiment.'”

Haller says she is getting death threats, has gotten hundreds of phone calls, and has contacted the FBI and the police.

“People said we should go kill ourselves,” she told the Orlando Sentinel. “They are being very threatening.”

Haller says she has received “hundreds of calls. It was every 30 seconds.”

“We’re just kind of scared right now,” she added.

Why did Feuerstein, calling from Arizona, pick a Florida bakery? No one knows, but he used the video to deliver an insane message.

“Christians are not allowed any sort of freedom of speech,” Feuerstein cries on the YouTube video. He goes on to claim that gay men, if they want to get married, should go find a woman and get married. “There’s no such thing as gay marriage,” he rails.

Feuerstein offers up the illogical and inane analogy of wanting a Jewish or Muslim restaurant to serve pork, as equivalent to wanting a Christian baker to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.

Of course, that’s not the same thing at all.

Feuerstein wants to force a business owner to produce a product they don’t make, then claim discrimination because they won’t make it – which is idiotic. It would be like going to the Gap and demanding they sell you a television.

If you will sell your wares to one person but not another because of whom they are, that’s discrimination. If you’re unwilling to sell a product you don’t sell, period, that’s a business decision.

Wedding cake bakers make and sell wedding cakes. By deciding to whom they are willing to sell, or to not sell their products, they can be accused of discriminating. 

Meanwhile, Feuerstein’s actions might be illegal.

“The video could violate a Florida law that requires consent of all parties to record a telephone conversation,” Andrea Flynn Mogensen, a Sarasota lawyer who specializes in civil-liberty cases, told the Orlando Sentinel.

“The same statute that criminalizes recording phone calls also criminalizes posting it and publishing it,” Mogensen said.

The law applies even if the call was placed from outside Florida. Recording conversations without consent is a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison.

Feuerstein removed the video from YouTube, but it has been reposted, and Cut The Cake is standing up by reposting it on their Facebook page. The outpouring of support has been huge, and a GoFundMe page was set up to help the bakery recover.

Watch:

 

Image: Screenshots via YouTube
Hat tip: Raw Story