‘They Don’t Have to Bake a Cake for You’: Baker to His ‘Fellow’ Gays and Lesbians

Kate Scanlon / July 21, 2015

A self-described gay baker named Jesse Bartholomew has come out in defense of Christian bakers who decline to bake cakes for same-sex weddings.

In a video he posted on his Facebook page, he said “they don’t have to bake a cake for you.”

“I bake wedding cakes for a living, and I cannot tell you how disgusted I am with my fellow gay and lesbian community, that they would stoop so low to force someone to bake a cake for them who simply doesn’t agree with them,” Bartholomew said.

A cake, Bartholomew said, is a very “personal” aspect of a wedding and shouldn’t involve “force”:

Personally, that wedding cake should be so personal to you and your wedding, just as the ring, just as the invitations, just as to everything in planning a wedding. That cake which costs hundreds—and the cakes that I bake can cost thousands—why would you want to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on a wedding cake and pay that money to someone who doesn’t want to bake the cake for you? 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. That baker has to spend hours perfecting that cake for you, for your wedding day. And if that cake isn’t perfect, then it ruins your wedding.

Bartholomew said that anyone who forces someone to violate his or her beliefs is a bully.

“There’s no other bakers out there?” he asked.

Forcing someone who objects to same-sex marriage to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding, Bartholomew said, is simultaneously bullying the baker and taking business away from someone who would “gladly” bake the cake.

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“It’s plain and simple: you are bullying someone. 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 gay and lesbians that would gladly have your business. Shame on you.”

In another post earlier this month, Bartholomew wrote that he is disappointed that “another bakery has been forced to shut down and face lawsuit.”