While reading Doug Wilson\u2019s blog, I came upon this<\/a>:<\/p>\n Now these very nice Christian people have for a number of years been dismissed as brim-full-o-hate, and their carefully chosen words of love and moral concern are always dismissed as mere hypocrisy. People in this class are fined megabucks for politely declining to bake the cake. \u201cNo, thank you.\u201d<\/strong> That\u2019s just the worst, capable of causing over seventy forms of trauma in lesbians made out of rice paper.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Let\u2019s set some facts straight, shall we?\u00a0First,\u00a0here\u2019s some background<\/a>:<\/p>\n The controversy began in January 2013\u00a0<\/a>when the Kleins turned away Rachel Cryer and Laurel Bowman from their bakery, saying that providing a cake for their wedding would have violated their Christian beliefs against same-sex marriage.<\/p>\n In August 2013, the women complained to the state Bureau of Labor and Industries. The agency conducted an investigation and in January 2014 brought charges that the Kleins had unlawfully discriminated against the couple because of their sexual orientation.<\/p>\n Oregon law bans discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in jobs and in places that serve the public, such as restaurants and bakeries.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Oregon has a nondiscrimination ordinance. What the Kleins did, in refusing to bake a simple wedding cake for the Bowman-Cryers, was against the law. As should always happen when a business breaks the law,\u00a0the Bowman-Cryers filed a complaint first with the Department of Justice and then with the Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI). That agency then opened the\u00a0investigation, and ultimately found enough evidence to bring charges.<\/p>\n Over two years after they were refused a cake, the Bowman-Cryers were awarded<\/a> a total of $135,000, to be paid by the Kleins.<\/p>\n The BOLI Final Order awards $60,000 in damages to Laurel Bowman-Cryer and $75,000 in damages to Rachel Bowman-Cryer for emotional suffering stemming directly from unlawful discrimination. The amounts are damages related to the harm suffered by the Complainants, not fines or civil penalties which are punitive in nature.<\/p>\n The Final Order notes that the non-economic damages are consistent with the agency\u2019s previous orders, such as an earlier ruling against a Bend dentist In the Matter of Andrew W. Engle. In that case, BOLI awarded a Christian employee $325,000 in damages for physical, mental and emotion suffering due to religious discrimination and harassment.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n You can read the final ruling\u00a0<\/span>here<\/a>. The information outlined in the ruling\u00a0makes it clear that the Bowman-Cryers suffered\u00a0emotionally as a result of the refusal and the subsequent media attention. And the refusal wasn\u2019t as polite as Wilson claims it was\u2014the Kleins quoted Leviticus at them. Rachel was sent into a spiral of anxiety and depression and Laurel was at a loss as to how to both help her and care for their two foster children. (If you still think this sounds ridiculous, read the final ruling<\/a>.) Their wedding went forward, but the discrimination they had faced hung over it. <\/span><\/p>\n But that was not all the couple suffered<\/em>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Laurel\u00a0Bowman-Cryer filed a complaint in January 2013, but because she filed it online on her smartphone she was not shown the disclaimer informing her that the complaint, including her name and address, would\u00a0be sent to the individual against whom it was being made. When Aaron Klein received the complaint, he immediately published it on his Facebook page in full, with Laurel\u2019s name and address included.<\/p>\n That\u2019s right, the Kleins doxxed the Bowman-Cryers<\/a>.<\/p>\n In testimony Tuesday, Rachel Bowman-Cryer said she and her wife received death threats as media attention and criticism from strangers escalated in the months after the story went national in January 2013.<\/p>\n She said the threats were part of a stream of \u201chateful, hurtful things\u201d that came after the couple\u2019s contact information (home address, phone and email) was posted on Aaron Klein\u2019s personal Facebook page<\/strong>. She said she feared for her life and her wife\u2019s life.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n And it\u2019s worse even than that, because the couple had foster children.<\/p>\n Also on Tuesday, Rachel Bowman-Cryer disclosed that she and Laurel felt an even greater level of stress because they were foster parents for two young girls and feared they might lose the children<\/strong>.<\/p>\n She said they spoke to state adoption officials who told them it was the couple\u2019s responsibility to protect the children and keep privileged information confidential, even as their own privacy was threatened by news coverage of the case.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n State officials told the Bowman-Cryers that if they couldn\u2019t protect the foster children in their home from the harassment that resulted from the Klein\u2019s public posting of their home address, etc., they would lose the children\u2014the children they were trying to adopt<\/em>. Can you say stressful?!<\/p>\n Attempts to downplay what the Bowman-Cryers went through (calling them \u201crice paper lesbians,\u201d etc.) ignore what the Bowman-Cryers\u00a0ignores the gravity of what the couple suffered. The $135,000 ultimately awarded in damages was only for the suffering resulting from the initial refusal (which the commissioner found continued throughout the period of media attention), but this was not the sum of what the couple experienced at the hands of the Kleins. The simple complaint they lodged resulted in a\u00a0media firestorm brought with it death threats, harassment, and the possibility of losing their children.<\/p>\n A\u00a0week after the story hit the media, the Bowman-Cryers\u2019 lawyer sent out a press release<\/a> stating that the Bowman-Cryers would not be doing any interviews, and that they they only had need of the support of their local community. The press release stated that any donations should go to Pride Northwest and asked everyone to respect their privacy. In other words, the Bowman-Cryers did everything they could not<\/em> to involve the national media or national gay rights organizations. In fact, the press released asked that even their names not be printed. The Bowman-Cryers were not involved in local\u00a0protest and boycott efforts.<\/p>\n In contrast to the Bowman-Cryers\u2019 desire to keep the case\u00a0quiet and private, the Kleins\u00a0went on a host\u00a0of media outlets across the country and soon became the darlings of the anti-gay movement. The Kleins have said that they and their children have also faced death threats. If this is true (as it very likely is), it\u00a0is very wrong, and is completely<\/em> indefensible. It is also\u00a0not the fault of the Bowman-Cryers, who neither doxxed the Kleins nor sought media coverage.\u00a0(I may write a later post about why we shouldn\u2019t harass bigots.)<\/p>\n The next time you see someone upset\u00a0about that nice baker couple Oregon ordered to pay\u00a0$135,000 to that spiteful thin-skinned\u00a0lesbian couple, let them know that that nice baker couple doxxed the lesbian couple and very nearly cost them custody of their two children as a result. And\u00a0then send them a copy of the court\u2019s final ruling<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n
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