Christian bakers, like Aaron and Melissa Klein of Oregon–who recently were ordered to pay $135,000 to a lesbian couple, after the Kleins refused to bake their wedding cake–are getting defended by an unlikely person: a gay baker named Jesse Bartholomew.
Bartholomew recently posted a video on his Facebook page, first reported by The Blaze, where he delivers a two-minute rant aimed squarely at the gay and lesbian community–accusing them of using fascist tactics, intended to silence conservative opposition.
“Hi guys,” Bartholomew said in the video. “My name is Jesse and I bake wedding cakes for a living, and I cannot tell you how disgusted I am with my fellow gay and lesbian community — that they would stoop so low as to force someone to bake a cake for them who simply doesn’t agree with them. And before you can go and blame me and say that they have to — no, they don’t have to. They don’t have to bake a cake for you.”
Bartholomew touches on one of the major arguments from conservatives–including the Kleins: that, because of the First Amendment right to freedom of religion, they should have the right to deny their services for a gay wedding.
In the Kleins’ case, they didn’t deny service to the couple that filed a complaint against them because they were lesbians–they had, apparently, served the couple and their extended family for a number of non-marriage events–but rather because they disagreed with the wedding itself. They claimed that this should not qualify as discrimination under the law.
But Bartholomew, from his interesting position inside the gay community, took his criticism a step farther: why would a gay couple even want their wedding cake baked by someone so adamantly opposed to their marriage, in the first place?
“Are you stupid?” he asks his audience. “That is your personal piece of your wedding. Your guests eat that. That cake is involved in your photos. That cake is taken in your mouth, and you eat it in your stomach… There’s no other bakers out there?”
He finished his video by landing an attack squarely on the tactics of the liberal Left–where unfair silencing of the opposition, rather than open and honest debate (let alone respect), has become the the new normal.
“It’s plain and simple,” Bartholomew said. “You are bullying someone, you are forcing someone, you are being a Nazi and forcing someone to bake a damn wedding cake for you when there are hundreds of other gays and lesbian [bakers] that would gladly have your business. Shame on you.”
