Right Wing Furious at ‘Gay Mafia’ After Christian Couple Closes Bakery That Discriminated

Christian Couple Received Half a Million Dollars in Donations

Melissa and Aaron Klein, the owners of the Sweet Cakes by Melissa bakery, have shut down their business. The Kleins, who discriminated against a same-sex couple and were ordered to pay $135,000 in damages, had become the poster children of far right wing Christians who falsely claimed they were “fined” for refusing to bake a wedding cake for a lesbian couple. The damages were related to the same-sex couple’s “emotional suffering stemming directly from unlawful discrimination.”

But now a photo on the Sweet Cakes website and Facebook page says, “Sorry! we’re closed,” and right wing religious conservatives are falsely blaming the LGBT community for the Kleins’ decision.

The Kleins over the past few years have been the beneficiaries of over $500,000 in donations, despite having to pay little more than just one-quarter of that amount in damages. In other words, discrimination paid handsomely for them. Melissa and Aaron also hit the conservative conference circuit, appearing onstage at anti-gay groups’ panels to discuss how their religious freedom, and that of other bakers, photographers, and florists, to discriminate against gay people had been stolen. They neglected to mention that majorities of voters have put into office the lawmakers who passed those bills, and majorities of voters across many states put into officeÂ governors who signed those bills into law.

On the right wing site RedState, David Leach of The Strident Conservative wrote, “Sweet Cakes By Melissa Closed For Good By Gay Mafia.” Leach didn’t quite explain how the “Gay Mafia” closed the bakery owned by the Oregon couple.

Despite “valiant efforts,” Leach claims, “and with the business completely ruined, the Klein family was literally run out of business by the anti-Christian, pro-LGBTÂ Gay Mafia,” which is of course false.

Fox News serial liar Todd Starnes claimed, “Family bakery closes after left-wing bullies finally get their pound of cake.”

If the “left-wing bullies” got “their pound of cake,” the Kleins got four pounds, a “fact” Starnes neglects to mention.

Starnes writes that “the Kleins have faced unrelenting attacks from the LGBT community. Their business was boycotted. They were bullied. Their children received death threats.” What he does not write is that the Kleins were boycotted by people and businesses who will not support discrimination, and the Kleins themselves, as court documents show, were targeted by the Kleins supporters and received death threats.

“The Kleins were literally run out of business by an anti-Christian mob,” the ever-hyperbolic Starnes claims, also neglecting to note that the vast majority in that supposed “anti-Christian mob” who “literally” ran the Kleins out of business are also Christian, and, again, the Kleins weren’t run out of business at all.

Over at the far right wing site TownHall, Starnes’ syndicated article appears with the headline, “Family Bakery Bullied by Militant LGBT Mob Closes.”

The Kleins, if they invest well, likely will never need to work again. They continue to receive donations via their crowdfunding site, which is an amazing feat of marketing. No word on if they have shared their new wealth with the truly needy.Â