Lately, conservative bakers have been in the news for their objections to constructing wedding cakes for same-sex couples. Melissa Klein was the darling of the Values Voter Summit as she sobbed onstage about being “forced” to close her bakery, Sweet Cakes By Melissa, after incurring a lawsuit for refusal of service to a lesbian couple. Her story was a deranged twisting of logic and it perfectly characterizes how many conservatives are claiming to be victims when told to stop institutionally discriminating against a protected class of people.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 made illegal the practice of discrimination based on race, gender, religion, and national origin. It applied to schools and workplaces that served the public, such as bakeries. The Oregon Equality Act of 2007 added sexual orientation to the list of protected groups.

Back in January of 2013, Klein turned away a lesbian couple that entered her public pastry palace looking to purchase a wedding cake. She stated that making such a cake would violate her religious beliefs, as she personally would rather the couple never get married, and since she couldn’t stop that, she would at least deny them a cake.

Breaking the law resulted in a $150,000 lawsuit from the state. Klein and her husband cried at the voter summit about their woes.

“I mean quite frankly, they didn’t just harass us, they harassed the other wedding vendors that we did business with. It cut off our referral system. We had to shut the shop down. It’s horrible to see your own government doing this to you.” – Aaron Klein

If You Can’t Bully Others, Are You Then the Victim?

Gays and lesbians have had an uphill battle to secure the protections that always should have been afforded to them by the Constitution. For decades, loving and committed couples could not get any legal recognition of marriage. Reasons were given such as not being able to procreate as a couple or that it was against the sanctity of marriage. Think about those critically for just two seconds and it would be laughable if it weren’t so tragic.

Men and women were denied entrance to hospitals as their partners died alone. They couldn’t count on the ability for both parents to be granted legal guardianship over their children and families were broken apart. These are reasons to sob in front of a crowd. Being told you have to bake cakes for customers at your public bakery, even if you don’t want to, is a pathetic insult to the long and hard-fought history of LGBT rights.

Ministers, Bakers, and Candlestick Makers

The Kleins are just flat out wrong when it comes to their complaints. We know that as a public business, they are subject to laws against discrimination, even if their religion tells them they should treat others badly (and it is very debatable whether or not Christianity encourages that in the first place).

Ministers, on the other hand, are exempt from this. They can object to providing religious services on the basis of their religious beliefs because, well, their business consists of those beliefs. While a large number of ministers ordained online through the Universal Life Church support marriage equality, there are some that do not. No matter what your beliefs, as a minister of the ULC they will be respected. Nobody will ever force you to perform a wedding ceremony that you do not wish to perform, for whatever reason.

Many of the ministers who are ordained online by the Universal Life Church are stepping up to do a wedding ceremony for a same-sex couple, and there are even instances of people getting the ordination just to do the wedding of friends or family members.

The people who are performing these ceremonies are able to quickly help same-sex couples marry freely in the states where it is now legal. There are people who have tried to protest these weddings, but they can only do so much because there is a movement of people who are working on their online ordination only because they want to help same-sex couples.

The Kleins are free to believe whatever they want – that is their right. There is no law that says that they have to run a bakery, but if they choose to do so, it is against the law to discriminate against gay and lesbian couples (or based on any protected class). They must check all personal beliefs at the door with respect to their professional conduct since making cakes isn’t a religious expression. They can believe that same-sex couples should not wed, but when they clock in, gays and lesbians can have their cake and eat it too.