REACH for a tissue – another Christian bigot says she’s the victim of “persecution” after she turfed a lesbian couple out of her cake shop.
Victoria Childress discovers that there is some truth in James Thurber's quote 'The most dangerous food is wedding cake'.
Victoria Childress, by all accounts, makes exceedingly tasty wedding cakes plus other stuff besides – but if you are gay, you’d best give Victoria’s Cake Cottage in Des Moines, Iowa, a VERY wide berth.
Childress, you see, is a Bible-lobotomised bigot, and a few days ago she turned away a lesbian couple who wanted a cake for their wedding. Now she’s claiming to be the victim of a “hate campaign”
Initially unaware that Trina Vodraska and Janelle Sievers were lesbians planning to get hitched, Childress made five cakes for the couple to sample.
But when she learned that the couple was gay, Childress told the women that she was not prepared to make a cake for them.
I was straight-forward with them and explained that I’m a Christian and that I have very strong convictions. I chose to be honest about it.
Immediately after she gave the couple the brush-off, gay activists launched a boycott of Victoria’s Cake Cottage.
Vodraska said that she had been offended by Childress. She told the KCCI television station:
It was degrading. It was like she chastised us for wanting to do business with her. I know Jesus loves me. I didn’t need her to tell me that. I didn’t go there for that. I just wanted to go there for a cake.
The pair also released a statement, calling the Christian cake baker a “bigot”.
Awareness of equality was our only goal in bringing this to light, it is not about cake or someone’s right to refuse service to a customer.
Childress said her decision had nothing to do with discrimination or the lesbian couple.
It doesn’t have anything to do with them – it was about my convictions. They can get their cake anywhere.
Childress claimed to have received “hateful” emails, and complained:
I’m being attacked because of my beliefs …
But she claimed that she received a positive reaction from some local business owners – along with some cake orders.
People are telling me they were proud of me for standing up for my beliefs because not many people do that these days. Business people are afraid to because they’re afraid to lose money.
Meanwhile, we learn today that our very own fundaloon, Stephen “Birdshit” Green, has today scrambled onto the failing “Boycott Tesco” bandwagon – a little late to my mind, as the dolt is usually in the vanguard of such matters. He’s started a “Boycott Tesco” petition which, as I write this, has the grand total of THREE signatories.
Green also has a link to the “militant atheist” Freethinker, which he says:
Helpfully points out that the Co-op sponsor Manchester Gay Pride (as well as throwing Christian Voice out of their bank) and that ASDA’s parent Wal-Mart give benefits to gay partners of employees in the USA.
And he predicts that:
Prayer will humble Tesco.
Not many people stand up for there beliefs and are afraid to lose money. What? In batshit crazy USA, do me a favour. She should try telling all her Gaad-fearing customers that she is an atheist and see if that loses her some money.
I wonder what the baker’s reaction would be if a couple of heterosexual atheists ordered one of her cakes? Would she decide she did not like their opinions and turn them away? These women were christians. Imagine the shock horror of a couple of atheists beaching up in her shop.
Should she not have a poster listing the people she didn’t want to serve e.g. No Gays served in this shop. She could explain she was a bible led christian. That would mean she was happy to have slaves, never worked on the Sabbath etc. etc.
Well, talk about having your cake and eating it…:-D
As for birdshit, I’m sure Tesco must be quaking in their corporate boots at this news. Nobhead.
I felt like adding myself to Green’s petition just to make him think there are people other his fellow loons who support him. But then I then thought better. And if you’re reading this, Stephen (it’s clear you do pass by this site), how about unblocking me in the name of, you know, Freedom of Speech.
I’ve just done it.
I have no intention of boycotting Tesco because the reason for this petition is a shameless lie and introduced by a right wing christian bigot.
Bugger, it doesn’t include the comments.
People like Childess bring shame to America and demonstrate the sickening lack of humanity in the ranks of the right wing.
Gays. Fruitcake. Stephen Green.
Nice segue Barry.
You bring the hate, we bring the campaign. Enjoy!
I love these observations on Green’s site:
There are a couple of other really effective things to do as well, but we shall let Christian Voice members exclusively know about them at the proper time!
Tesco’s spin centres on ‘diversity’ as an ‘inclusive store’ – they even have an ‘Out at Tesco’ webpage promoting sodomy amongst their employees and a page commending staff for taking part in the 2010 parade – and ignores the fact that Gay Pride is a provocative and aggressive display of indecency and perversion. For all their posturing, would Tesco actually like a gay pride march through one of their stores? And if they are really interested in diversity, will they be sponsoring the ex-gay movement? Don’t hold your breath.
Apparently this place is a militant atheist website. What exactly does it take to be militant these days? The keyboard is mightier than the cruise missile?
Will be interesting to see if my comment regarding god not hating cancer nearly as much as he apparently hates gay people makes it through Green’s rock solid mental filter. All in all it’s just another brick in the wall.
Yes, JMW: God is “mighty”, and he will “humble proud Tesco in answer to prayer”, but he can do fuck all to cure cancer. What a dolt Green is!
Interesting that he mentions “ex-gays” here as well. I wonder whether he was thinking of this recent story, which got the bigots in a spin again:
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2011/11/15/liverpool-church-which-helps-people-out-of-homosexuality-linked-to-home-exorcisms/
Just checked, my comment was not approved. Shock, horror! I wasn’t even rude. Green is spineless.
Interesting, too, to see that Green, who prevented the cancer charity Maggie’s Centres from receiving thousands of pounds of “tainted money” (his say-so), is now claiming (self-righteously) that they were amply recompensed by the additional publicity that he so kindly generated (no evidence forthcoming). However, atheists could do worse than follow the good Christian’s advice over the Tesco business:
4 Email/write to the Tesco Group Chief Executive, Philip Clark, philip.clarke@tesco.com and their Marketing Director, Richard Brasher: richard.brasher@tesco.com. You can also write to their new Chairman, Sir Richard Broadbent, at New Tesco House, Delamare Rd, Cheshunt, Herts, EN8 9SL. His email seems to be: richard.broadbent@tesco.com
Good of him to provide us with the details!
JMW,
Try as you might, unless you slavishly agree with Birdshit, you have zero chance of getting through.
One good thing, though, is since the disclosure of him being a wife beater he has actually become even more a figure of ridicule than before. He can no longer take the moral high ground as he has completely lost it.
Back on this side of the pond, Lincoln council will be spreading blessed grit on the roads this winter. Stand by for an empirical comparison of the effectiveness of holy and regular road grit at keeping ice down.
this woman obviously hasn’t read the bible properly, there isn’t a jot in there about lesbians or where being lesbian stands in gods eyes. Though it seems the lesbians were chriatian as well, i would call them turncoats, for not appreciating the problems it causes for their homosexual male colleagues.
Hang on a mo here, folks – Vodraska said that she had been offended by Childress. She told the KCCI television station: “It was degrading. It was like she chastised us for wanting to do business with her. I know Jesus loves me.”
WTF? IsVodraska a religiot too? Certainly sounds like it to me.
Victoria Sponge may well find herself on the wrong end of a lawsuit if the couple decide to sue.
@AgentCormac: I think the lesbian would be cake eaters were christians. They have now had an instructive example of the bigotry of the outfit to which they give their allegiance. Time for a rethink for them, perhaps?
Who’s more pathetic: the baking bigot or the lesbian who thinks that Jesus loves her, in spite of her sexual preference? Who cares about the feelings of a 2.000 year dead carpenter from the ME? It’s hard to sympathize with gay Xtians who find out what Xtian love can mean, and then complain about it.
JMW:
http://i43.tinypic.com/287jdq1.jpg
I am an atheist, but don’t really understand why is it a problem that a private business owner does not want to make business with someone. In teh end it will be the cakemaker who loses money and custom.
Also eveyrbody should have a right to decide for whom he wants to work. If I don’t like lesbians, Christians, blond people or whatever, I don’t do business with them and that’s it.
I find it incredible that anyone can be gay and religious; which part of their brains do they switch off. And I can’t work out why gay people – or straight women – want to support organisations that hate them. It must be a type of Stockholm syndrome. These gay xtains etc just haven’t worked out that by being members of the bigots club they are tacitly supporting discrimination against themselves.
Every time I hear about someone in a secular job or position that involves weddings, and they claim they can’t help people who are same sex because of their “religious beliefs” I want to scream at them that they’ve probably been involved with TONS of weddings that go against their religious beliefs.
Many religions have strict standards for marriage that many heterosexual couples break all the time, such as pre-marital sex, using birth control, inter-faith marriages.
Angela_K
Check out Richard Coles the one time member of The Communards and now a vicar in the CoE. This guy is seriously confused.
@guido
Maybe you should think about how you would feel if you were being refused goods or services due to your lack of religious belief. The likes of Childress lost this argument half a century ago when the issue was about black and jewish people. The question is still the same, the answer is still the same, and people like her are still wrong. Persecution of outsiders and each other has been a very large part of the Christian religion for two thousand years. I think that they are desperate to justify their discrimination against the gays because once that has gone there will be no-one left that they are allowed to pick on.
Broga. ‘I think the lesbian would be cake eaters were christians…’
Muffin Munchers 4 Jesus?
@Pete H – good one!
@Guido – Aside from it being plain illegal to discriminate against customers because of their sexual orientation, how do you not understand why that is a problem? Have you not heard of racial and religious segregation, Jim Crow laws of America, apartheid, Kristalnacht? The countless other times in the past century or so alone that people have been allowed to say “I don’t want to deal with x segment of society”, that segment of society has been ostracised and ghettoised, without fail. Of course it is a problem if private business owners are allowed to decide who they will not do business with. Taken to its logical extreme, all the supermarkets could decide they’re fed up with Christian whingeing and won’t sell goods to any of them, leaving them in some communities with no other access to food so they’ll either have to start stealing from people or starve. How is that good for society?
I understand you think you’re trying to have a balanced approach here, but you have to think these things through – society is larger than one Christian getting their nose bent out of joint or one Lesbian couple being denied a cake. The slippery slope is only a fallacy if you don’t have thousands of years’ worth of evidence of what would happen if certain people could get away with it – so don’t let them get away with it.
@Stonyground – when all else fails, there’s always the children to pick on.
Until I skimmed the signatures in the Birdshit petition I didn’t realise that Mr and Mrs Anonymous created such an enormous family. Also, judging by the number of times the same surnames appear together it would seem that a lot of the supporters either clicked twice or share a household with a fellow signee so, whatever the final count that Green crows about, Tescos won’t be losing the custom of that many homes by a long shot.
remigius
Do we want to be going there?
Guido,
The point, as JMW and Stoneyground have pointed out is that cake-makers or B&B’s may be relatively thick on the ground in some places but in others the threat of excluding a particular group from a particular commercial concern can be serious. The only grocery store in town? The only bar or coffee shop?
@Don. Oh grow a sense of humour you tedious twat.
I wonder if there are any adulterers in her church…if so, has she killed any? After all, it is gods will, adulterers must be stoned to death. If not she is nothing more than a hateful hypocrite follower of a hate cult, looking for other people to hate.
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2011/11/23/lesbian-couple-unsure-whether-to-file-complaint-over-refused-wedding-cake/
Guido:”I am an atheist, but don’t really understand why is it a problem that a private business owner does not want to make business with someone. In teh end it will be the cakemaker who loses money and custom.”
I tend to agree with you here. I am bothered by the reach of laws that go pretty far into people’s preferences, and am also bothered by the lawsuit oriented responses by other commenters. While there are certain accommodations which need to be open to everyone because they’re needed on an immediate basis (gas stations, restaurants, hotels, medical), the list is fairly limited.
Working with a caterer or wedding photographer really requires that they be emotionally on board with the occasion. If it really bothers them, then they won’t be a good choice. I’d MUCH RATHER be told up front that they object, then to have them grudgingly go along because the law requires it. Since you order your wedding support ahead of time, you can always choose someone else.
When we decided to get married, being an older and quirky couple, we decided to go the ‘wedding mill’ route in Gatlinburg TN, just for the fun of it and started checking into arrangements. Well some of the marriage purveyors did not want to do an atheist (or even non Christian) wedding. So what? We finally found someone who did not object.
As someone who believes in personal freedom as much as in atheism, I am against unnecessarily impinging on peoples’ right to opinions and preferences no matter how stupid.
possible duplicate post
Guido:”I am an atheist, but don’t really understand why is it a problem that a private business owner does not want to make business with someone. In teh end it will be the cakemaker who loses money and custom.”
I tend to agree with you here. I am bothered by the reach of laws that go pretty far into people’s preferences, and am also bothered by the lawsuit oriented responses by other commenters. While there are certain accommodations which need to be open to everyone because they’re needed on an immediate basis (gas stations, restaurants, hotels, medical), the list is fairly limited.
Working with a caterer or wedding photographer really requires that they be emotionally on board with the occasion. If it really bothers them, then they won’t be a good choice. I’d MUCH RATHER be told up front that they object, then to have them grudgingly go along because the law requires it. Since you order your wedding support ahead of time, you can always choose someone else.
When we decided to get married, being an older and quirky couple, we decided to go the ‘wedding mill’ route in Gatlinburg TN, just for the fun of it and started checking into arrangements. Well some of the marriage purveyors did not want to do an atheist (or even non Christian) wedding. So what? We finally found someone who did not object.
As someone who believes in personal freedom as much as in atheism, I am against unnecessarily impinging on peoples’ right to opinions and preferences no matter how stupid.