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Texas baker refuses to make wedding cake for gay couple

Texas baker refuses to make wedding cake for gay couple

A Longview, Texas baker is in the news for refusing to make a wedding cake for a gay couple. Edie DeLorme, co-owner of Kern’s Bakery, will face no repercussions for denying services to the men; discriminating against LGBT people is legal in Texas.

According to the Longview News-Journal, Ben Valencia and Luis Marmolejo plan to marry on March 27 and went to the bakery seeking a quote for their wedding cake. But when the two showed Delorme a photo of the cake they wanted, she asked them who the cake was for.

“We just went in there to get a quote,” Valencia said. “Then she says, ‘Who’s this for?’ We looked at each other.”

DeLorme doesn’t deny refusing to serve the gay couple. In fact, she’s trying like mad to find an excuse for her bigoted behavior – and she’s hiding behind her religion to do it.

“And when they said it was them, I said, ‘Sorry. We don’t provide cakes for homosexual marriages. It’s not against people or what they choose to be part of,” she told the News-Journal. “We don’t do alcohol-related cakes or risque (ones). We’ve turned down cake for, like, ‘Can you make a giant Skoal can?’ … It’s not that we single out one (reason).”

When questioned how the shop responds to other requests that would violate the Bible’s laws on marriage, DeLorme hedged. In the Bible, Jesus says that second marriages are adultery if the first marriage ended for any reason other than a cheating spouse. Asked about divorced people who want to remarry, she admits that they fulfill the requests.

“We’ve talked about that,” she said. “We would really have to do a lot of prying to find out. That’s something David and I would have to talk about, whether that would be something that we should participate in or not.”

Valencia, for his part, is trying to keep a positive attitude despite the baker’s bigotry.

“I wasn’t really mad,” he said. “I was more like saddened by it, because that is the first time anything like that has happened to me.”

Following the Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, “I was excited for people to be able to love whom they want to, to be with for the rest of their lives,” Marmolejo told the newspaper. “I don’t see how making a cake for somebody is going to compromise your beliefs. I know that there aren’t laws that protect discrimination against people’s sexual orientation. I think some employers have that in their employee handbook, but I don’t think it’s a law.”

While Texas has already passed a law to allow clergy to refuse to participate in a same-sex wedding, even though that right is already federal law. The day the couple were turned away at the bakery, the legislature was discussing ways to expand that right to business owners who also want to discriminate against LGBT people.

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