Has Oregon repealed freedom of religion?

The operators of a bakery in Oregon have now been ordered to pay damages of $135,000 for refusing to make a wedding cake for a lesbian couple back in 2013. But the decision doesn’t stop there.

Oregon’s Labor Bureau also ruled Aaron and Melissa Klein, who ran the bakery, violated the law just by explaining publicly why they turned the women away.

“I didn’t want to be a part of her marriage which I think is wrong,” Aaron said on the Christian Broadcasting Network. “I’d rather stand up for what I believe in and what I feel is right than to bow down to this.”

“I am who I am and I choose to serve God,” Melissa added.

The state said that those comments on the Christian Broadcasting Network were also a violation because in saying that they would stand up for their faith, the Kleins were essentially declaring that they intended to discriminate in the future.

That prompted the Kleins’ attorney, Anna Harmon, to accuse the State of Oregon of punishing her clients for merely stating their religious beliefs, and has denied them their constitutional rights.

“The state official telling any American citizen what he can or cannot say, particularly in this case where it was something as benign as ‘we will stand strong in our faith,’ it’s scary,” Harmon said.

In response, a spokesman for Oregon’s Labor Bureau told me that preaching your Christian faith is your constitutional right, unless your intent is to send a message you won’t serve gay people.

In other words as far as the State of Oregon is concerned, using religion to justify not serving gay people is like posting a “Whites Only” sign over a water fountain and then trying to make it legal by adding the words “because God said so.”