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An Oregon bakery that refused to make a cake for a lesbian wedding readily agreed to do business with an undercover reporter who pretended to be hosting a variety of events social conservatives often find offensive, according to an alternative weekly paper in Oregon.
"I was wondering if you could do two little cakes. My friend is a researcher at OHSU and she just got a grant for cloning human stem cells, so I thought I’d get her two identical cakes—basically, two little clone cakes. How much would they cost?" the covert reporter asked an employee at Sweet Cakes By Melissa in Gresham, Ore.
“Ha. All right. When are you looking to do it? It’ll be $25.99 each, so about $50 to start," a bakery employee told the reporter, according to The Willamette Week.
In addition to agreeing to make a cake for a "pagan solstice party" (the reporter requested a pentagram of icing on the cake), Sweet Cakes also agreed to make custom cakes for a divorce party and a party for a woman who'd had multiple babies out of wedlock, the paper notes.
Earlier this year, Sweet Cakes' owner Aaron Klein admitted to denying a lesbian bride-to-be service when she visited his shop.
"I believe that marriage is a religious institution ordained by God," Klein told NBC News in February.
Oddly, Sweet Cakes reportedly saw a boom in business after the news got out about Klein's refusal to serve the lesbian couple, the Associated Press reported.
Sweet Cakes By Melissa is reportedly under investigation by the Oregon Attorney General's civil enforcement officers because of its refusal to do business with the lesbian couple, ABC affiliate KATU-TV reported in February.
In 2007, Oregon passed the Oregon Equality Act, which prohibits businesses from discriminating based on sexual orientation.
Federal law does not prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, but 21 states (and Washington, D.C.) have enacted their own legislation outlawing it.
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