GAY TRUTH

The Christian bakers fined and gagged by an Oregon labor tribunal for refusing to make a cake for a same-sex wedding have raised $355,000 on funding website  Continue To Give  in the last two weeks. They plan to appeal the ruling that helped shut down their storefront bakery. Aaron and Melissa Klein ran a family bakery for several years until 2013, when a lesbian couple, Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer, whom they had served many times, ordered a wedding cake. Aaron declined on religious grounds and swiftly found himself the target of a complaint lodged with the Oregon Bureau of Labor , a torrent of social media abuse, and a boycott. Though the family had hoped to pass on Sweet Cakes by Melissa to their five children, the boycott reduced them to working from their home kitchen and forced Aaron to take a job as a garbage collector. Labor commissioner Brad Avakian fined the Kleins $135,000 and ordered the couple  "to cease and desist from publishing, circulating, is

GRESHAM, OR, -  The State agency that   ordered an Oregon Christian couple to pay   two lesbians $135,000 for   refusing to take part   in their homosexual “wedding” has begun legal proceedings to seize the couple’s assets. Aaron and Melissa Klein, of   Sweet Cakes by Melissa , were fined by an administrative judge this past spring after declining in January 2013 to bake a cake for the same-sex event based on their religious beliefs. The fine had been ordered by The Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries , which had accused them of violating   the Oregon Equality Act of 2007. “Our agency has docketed the judgment and is exploring collection options,” said Charlie Burr, communications director for the Bureau, The Daily Signal   reports . Docketing the judgment means putting it on the formal records of the court, and is the first step the Bureau must take in the course of seizing the Kleins’ house, property, or other assets in place of their payment of the fine. The Bur

P ORTLAND, OR, September 4, 2013 ( LifeSiteNews.com ) – A Portland bar owner will have to pay a $400,000 fine for kicking out a group of cross-dressers whom he says were ruining his business. Chris Penner, the owner of the Twilight Room Annex, has to pay 11 transgender patrons the hefty sum after asking them to stop coming to his bar. Mike Zacchino/The Oregonian Penner  said  female patrons complained that the transgender men went to the restroom with the stall doors open, then left the toilet seats up when they were finished. “I feel for this bar owner. Obviously these gender-confused men who want to be 'women' were causing him to lose customers with their outrageous behavior,” Peter LaBarbera , president of  Americans For Truth About Homosexuality , told LifeSiteNews.com. “Now he's been hit with a massive fine courtesy of discriminatory pro- LGBT laws .” Penner left a voicemail asking the men, who call themselves the T-Girls, to stop coming to his bar (the