The Christian owners of a bakery in Texas claim they’ve been on the receiving end of threats after refusing to bake a cake for a gay couple.
According to Edie and David Delorme, the owners of the Kern’s Bake Shop in Longview, Texas, the trouble started when Ben Valencia and Luis Marmolejo came to the store asking for a wedding cake.
“I was up front with them,” Edie told Fox News’ Todd Starnes, citing their family’s religious convictions. “I said, ‘I’m sorry but we don’t provide wedding cakes for homosexual marriages.”
The bakers say they offered the couple a list of other establishments that could accommodate their request, but say the men simply left without further discussion.
“We don’t do cakes that might conflict with our spiritual convictions,” Edie told Starnes. “It was not something personal against the two young men. We just need to be able to run our business in a way that honors God.”
The business owners say the next thing they knew the gay couple had publicized the incident in the local media.
“It just kind of makes you feel dehumanized,” Valencia told the Longview News-Journal Tuesday. “People shouldn’t have to worry about going into a business, especially a public business that serves the public, and have to worry about being turned away for something, for who you are.”
The Delormes disagreed, arguing a business has the right to conduct itself according to its owners’ beliefs.
“If I went to a baker, a homosexual baker, and they didn’t want to provide a cake for an event that maybe celebrated marriage between a man and a woman, that would be OK for them to say, ‘That’s not in line with our values,'” Edie told the News-Journal.
The bakers say after they appeared in the media angry messages began flooding in.
“See you in Hell, lady,” one message said, according to Starnes. “Racist criminals.”
“This business is run by a homophobic piece of s***,” said another message.
Delorme said they didn’t single out the couple, as the bakery also refuses other cakes.
“We don’t do alcohol-related cakes or risque (ones),” she said, adding the business is still undecided on whether or not to bake cakes for second marriages. “We’ve turned down cake for, like, ‘Can you make a giant Skoal can?’ … It’s not that we single out one (reason).”
Social commentator Steven Crowder illustrated the hypocrisy of the left in a recent stunt, showing how leftists routinely attack Christian bakers who reserve the right to refuse services based on their religious beliefs, while ignoring Muslim bakers who turn gays away with little to no backlash.
H/T: Todd Starnes
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