Arizona Cake Maker Turns Away Peoria Same-Sex Couple
A Peoria same-sex couple claims a cake business owner in Laveen gave them the cold shoulder after she found out about their lifestyle.
Rebecca, who did not want us to use her last name, said she was absolutely shocked.
“She contacted [a] mutual friend and said ‘Is this a same-sex relationship?’ They answered ‘yes,’ and she just stopped talking to us,” said Rebecca, referring to the mutual friend who introduced the couple to the woman.
“She’s never really had that ‘oh, you’re gay.’ She doesn’t look like that stereotypical lesbian so-to-speak,” said Molly Pearce, Rebecca’s partner.
Sweet Tooth by Charity is a small operation out of Laveen that typically only bakes cakes for family and friends, more of a word-of-mouth type of business.
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Read the rest here: Valley Business Turns Away Peoria Same-Sex Couple
Last Thursday, a bill to make this kind of discrimination legal in Arizona was sent to Jan Brewer for her signature. She has until next Friday to sign it or not. Her comment on it last Friday:
“I think anybody that owns a business can choose who they work with or who they don’t work with,” Brewer told CNN in Washington on Friday. “But I don’t know that it needs to be statutory. In my life and in my businesses, if I don’t want to do business or if I don’t want to deal with a particular company or person or whatever, I’m not interested. That’s America. That’s freedom.”
I’m no constitutional scholar, but I believe she’s wrong about the legality of discrimination by a business.
It looks like the business involved, Sweet Tooth by Charity, intends to use as a defense the claim that it is not actually a business. I did a search for any public listings, and only found that there probably was a Facebook page that was taken down. Maybe they’ll get in trouble for running a business without a license and without paying taxes.
(Hat tip to Stanley Sea for the subtitle.)
More about the potential for Brewer to veto the bill:
Former Bush Strategist: Anti-LGBT Law Uses Christianity Like Muslim Terrorists Use Islam http://t.co/vpnJnbFTGA via @mediaite
— Stephen Lemons (@stephenlemons) February 23, 2014