A Florida bakery is receiving threats, the owners say, after a YouTuber encouraged people to call the shop. In a YouTube video, he called the bakery and asked them to make a cake bearing a message against same-sex marriage. Thinking it was a prank, the bakery employee refused and hung up. Now, they say, they’ve received death threats.
In an attempt to prove a point in the debate about whether a bakery that provides wedding cakes to opposite-sex couples should also be required to provide the identical service to same-sex couples, former pastor Josh Feurstein called Cut The Cake in Florida and asked for a sheet cake with “We do not support gay marriage” printed on it.
In the video below, you can see Feurstein attempting to order from the bakery then encouraging viewers to call the shop. He goes on to repeat the same arguments that have been heard many times: a Kosher deli shouldn’t be required to sell pork, a gay man who wants to get married should find a wife, and that soon pastors will be jailed for preaching scripture.
According to Mediaite , the bakery began receiving hundreds of phone calls — including death threats.
Like the pizza shop in Indiana that has seen so much attention in recent days, Cut The Cake is seeing certain effects: phone calls, online reviews, and a GoFundMe page. Unlike Memories Pizza, though, this bakery has enough positive reviews to counteract many of the negatives it is recieving — out of around 1,000 Facebook reviews , well over 900 are 5-star.
The subtle difference between “We won’t sell that product” and “We won’t sell our products to you” may be lost on many internet warriors, but it doesn’t appear to be missed by the legal system.
Notably, in Colorado, a similar case has already been settled — with the state’s investigation determining that this was not a case of discrimination, since the bakery did not refuse to do business with the customer based on religion (or other protected class), but merely refused to write certain messages on the cake.
A GoFundMe has been started for Cut The Cake, where the business has come to a complete halt with nonstop calls placing fake orders and calling the owners bigots and “anti-Christs.”
Their Facebook page continues to be flooded with vitriolic abuse, anti-gay slurs, and accusations of being anti-Christian.
In response to the bakery receiving threats and attacks for refusing to bake the cake (which they say they thought was a prank, since the call came on April 1st), supporters have raised nearly $10,000 as of this posting.
[Photo by:David McNew/Getty Images]