[VIDEO] State Silences Bakers Who Refused to Make Cake for Lesbian Couple, Fines Them $135K

Oregon Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian finalized a preliminary ruling today ordering Aaron and Melissa Klein, the bakers who refused to make a cake for a same-sex wedding, to pay $135,000 in emotional damages to the couple they denied service.

“This case is not about a wedding cake or a marriage,” Avakian wrote. “It is about a business’s refusal to serve someone because of their sexual orientation. Under Oregon law, that is illegal.”

In the ruling, Avakian placed an effective gag order on the Kleins, ordering them to “cease and desist” from speaking publicly about not wanting to bake cakes for same-sex weddings based on their Christian beliefs.

“This effectively strips us of all our first amendment rights,” the Kleins, owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa, which has since closed, wrote on their Facebook page. “According to the state of Oregon we neither have freedom of religion or freedom of speech.”

The cease and desist came about after Aaron and Melissa Klein participated in an interview with Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins. During the interview, Aaron said among other things, “This fight is not over. We will continue to stand strong.”

Lawyers for plaintiffs, Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer, argued that in making this statement, the Kleins violated an Oregon law banning people from acting on behalf of a place of public accommodation (in this case, the place would be the Kleins’ former bakery) to communicate anything to the effect that the place of public accommodation would discriminate.

Administrative Law Judge Alan McCullough, who is employed by the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries and was appointed by Avakian, threw out the argument in the “proposed order” he issued back in April.

But today, Avakian, who was in charge of making the final ruling in the case—and is also an elected politician—reversed that decision.

Via: Daily Signal

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The Rise of House Clinton

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays. Dear Reader (including Josh Duggar who foolishly got a job at the Family Research Council rather than as a party planner on Jeffrey Epstein’s plane), Bill Clinton is the greatest gaslighter in modern American politics. 

This is from the Wikipedia entry on “Gaslighting”: Sociopaths frequently use gaslighting tactics. Sociopaths consistently transgress social mores, break laws, and exploit others, but typically, are also charming and convincing liars who consistently deny wrongdoing. Thus, some who have been victimized by sociopaths may doubt their perceptions. Some physically abusive spouses may gaslight their partners by flatly denying that they have been violent. Gaslighting describes a dynamic observed in some cases of marital infidelity: “Therapists may contribute to the victim’s distress through mislabeling the woman’s reactions. . . . 

The gaslighting behaviors of the husband provide a recipe for the so-called ’nervous breakdown’ for some women [and] suicide in some of the worst situations.” A truly sociopathic liar (though his sociopathologies hardly end there), Clinton has a gift for making other people feel like there is something wrong with them for objecting to his deceptions. At the outset of the 1990s, liberals had worked themselves into a moral panic about sexual harassment. If anything, it was a bigger obsession than the campus-rape panic we’ve been witnessing over the last few years (no doubt in part because there was more factual basis to the problem). Male politicians — Bob Packwood, John Tower, et al. 

— had their careers summarily ended because of their “womanizing” — a term popularized by Tower’s predations. (Ironically, the original meaning of the word was to “make effeminate,” i.e., to turn into a woman. Given the mainstreaming of sex-change surgery, maybe it’s time to rehabilitate the older definition?)

Via: NRO

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Cruz wins religious conservatives' 2016 straw poll

Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz decidedly won the presidential straw poll at the 2013 Values Voters summit, solidifying his status among religious conservatives.

Cruz, a first-term senator and Tea Party favorite, has emerged as one of the Republican Party and conservative movement’s most dynamic leaders –  highlighted by his effort to defund ObamaCare.

Cruz, who appears to have presidential aspirations, took 42 percent of the vote, with Dr. Ben Carson and former Pennsylvania Sen. and GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum each getting 13 percent.

Though the 2016 race is years off, the annual summit in Washington is considered an early indication of how conservative voters are leaning.

“I just spoke with Senator Cruz and he wanted me to convey to you his deep appreciation for your enthusiastic and … that he was very grateful to know that there are Americans across the country who are standing with him as he stands for your values here in Washington, D.C.,” said Tony Perkins, the head of the Family Research Council,  which is hosting the three-day event, according to The Washington Times.

Among the other Capitol Hill conservatives to speak at the event were GOP Sens. Rand Paul, of Kentucky, and Marco Rubio of Florida, also thought to have 2016 White House aspirations.

Paul finished in fourth place in the straw poll with 6 percent of the vote and Mr. Rubio finished fifth with 5 percent.

Cruz, whose speech was interrupted several times by immigration reform advocates, said Friday the health care law and Obama's spending priorities had put the nation on the wrong track. "We have a couple of years to turn this country around, or we go off the cliff into oblivion," he said.

Via Fox News Politics

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“Hate Map” of Conservatives Key in FRC Shooting

The domestic terrorist who carried out the politically-motivated shooting at the Family Research Council (FRC) gets sentenced this week and it should not be forgotten that he got his target list from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a nonprofit that features conservative organizations on a catalogue of “hate groups.”

Floyd Lee Corkins, who has pleaded guilty in the shooting, has admitted that he got his target list, which included the FRC, from the SPLC, a leftwing civil rights group that labels conservatives who disagree with it on social issues hateful. The SPLC’s website features a map of the United States that helps locate what it labels as hate groups around the nation. When an area of the map is clicked, a list appears with the name and location of hate groups. There’s also a “select a state” box where you can simply write in the state and hate groups appear for that particular area.

The FRC, a Christian organization that promotes the traditional family unit and the Judeo- Christian value system, appears on that hate map under Washington D.C. In mid-August of last year Corkins stormed into the FRC’s Washington D.C. headquarters with the intention of killing as many employees as possible, according to a news report that cites legal documents. He had purchased a semiautomatic pistol from a Virginia store the day before the rampage.  

Corkins shot an unarmed security guard at the FRC, but the security guard was able to subdue him after a struggle that left the guard with a bullet in one arm. Earlier this year Corkins pleaded guilty to three serious crimes; committing an act of terrorism while armed, assault with intent to kill while armed and interstate transportation of a firearm and ammunition for the shooting. Corkins is the first defendant to be convicted under the D.C.’s Anti-Terrorism Act of 2002, which prosecutes crimes committed to “intimidate or coerce a significant population of the District of Columbia or the United States.”

When federal investigators questioned him after the shooting Corkins explained that he attacked the FRC’s headquarters because the SPLC identified it as a hate group. “I found them online, did a little research, went to the website, stuff like that,” he tells authorities in the chilling  interrogation video which is posted on the FRC’s website. “The SPLC’s reckless labeling has led to devastating consequences,” FRC President Tony Perkins said at the time. “Because of its ‘hate group’ labeling, a deadly terrorist had a guidemap to FRC and other organizations.”

Following the shooting Judicial Watch launched an investigation into what influence the SPLC’s branding of hate groups has had on U.S. government agencies. In January JW obtained nearly 24 pages of emails from U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Civil Rights and Tax divisions revealing questionable behavior by agency personnel while negotiating for SPLC’s co-founder Morris Dees to appear as the featured speaker at a July 31, 2012, “Diversity Training Event.”

Via: Judicial Watch

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