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Food

This Gay Pastry Chef Thinks Bakeries Should Be Allowed to Discriminate Freely

A Wisconsin-based gay baker has made a strongly worded video expressing his belief that same-sex couples who demand that bakeries make cakes for them are "Nazis."

Sure, we've made a major stride when it comes to legalizing same-sex marriage in the US, but there are still other forms of discrimination that gays, lesbians, and transgender citizens have to endure regularly. Homophobia is still common, and there's job and workplace discrimination. And you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone in the LGBT community who thinks that refusing to serve customers on the basis of their sexual orientation is a legitimate or fair thing to do, though it unfortunately still happens.

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One way this has manifested has been in the rash of recent cases involving bakers refusing to create wedding cakes for gay and lesbian couples. A recent example in Colorado was ruled unlawful discrimination, and earlier this month, an Oregon bakery was charged some $135,000 for denying service to a same-sex couple. Many civil rights organizations and members of the gay community have applauded these rulings in hopes that they could prevent future incidents of inequity.

But there might be one exception. Meet Wisconsin-based pastry chef Jesse Bartholemew, who thinks that gays have no right to impose their Draconian will on innocent wedding-cake bakers.

Bartholemew apparently felt so strongly about this issue that he took to Facebook to post what can only be described as a rant against his "bullying" community of matrimonial gays:

"I cannot tell you how disgusted I am with my fellow gay and lesbian community," he says, "that they would stoop so low as to force someone to bake a cake for them who simply doesn't agree with them. And before you can go and blame me and say that they have to—no, they don't have to! They don't have to bake a cake for you!"

The crux of Bartholemew's argument is time and money. Soon-to-be-married couples spend hundreds—if not thousands—of dollars on their wedding cakes, he says, and bakers spend hours perfecting them. Shouldn't both parties be, like, simpatico?

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Well, he phrases it a bit differently. "Are you stupid? That is your personal piece of your wedding. Your guests eat that. That cake is involved in your photos. That cake is taken in your mouth, and you eat it in your stomach."

The kicker, of course, is this: "YOU'RE BULLYING SOMEONE," Bartholemew nearly screams. Yes, members of the LGBT community—who have laboriously won their right to be open about their sexuality amid historical threats of violence, imprisonment, and alienation—are bullying poor bakers.

Oh, and he goes on. "You are forcing someone—you are being a Nazi and forcing someone to bake a damn wedding cake for you when there are hundreds of other gays and lesbians that would gladly have your business. Shame on you."

Yep, that's right: Gays and lesbians who want straight people to bake their wedding cakes are Nazis. Gays and lesbians who would have been murdered under the actual Nazi regime. Gays and lesbians who are only out and able to marry because the previous generations in their community chose to protest discrimination and sodomy laws.

While it might puzzle the mind to have a wedding cake baked full of resentment by someone who is ideologically opposed to the idea of homosexuality, that does not a Nazi make.