A central Florida baker says she has
received death threats after she refused to bake a cake with an
anti-marriage equality message.
Joshua Feuerstein, a former pastor and
social media personality, posted a video online of him calling Cut
the Cake and asking for the cake.
“I need a sheet cake and I need it to
say, 'We do not support gay marriage,'” Feuerstein is heard telling
owner Sharon Haller in the nearly 4-minute video.
“Is this a crank call?” Haller
asks.
“No.”
“Oh, we wouldn't do that,” Haller
responds. “Sorry.”
“I love gay people,” Feuerstein
tells viewers after speaking with Haller. “For me, this is nothing
against gay people. For me, this is about religious freedom.”
“I'm asking that you today would show
the hypocrisy that's going on by Cut the Cake and Sharon Haller and
all these other bakeries. Would you take a moment and click share on
the bottom of this video. Why? We have to protect religious freedom
in America,” he adds.
The video was viewed more than 1
million times before Feuerstein took it down at the bakery's request,
Local
6 reported. Haller has since re-posted it.
“I wanted to see if it was actually a
double standard,” Feuerstein told Local 6. “If a gay-friendly
bakery and one that advertised themselves as so on pro-LGBT wedding
sites would actually bake a cake that went against their principles.”
Haller said that hundreds of calls
brought her business to a halt.
“We started getting some hundreds of
phone calls and making very nasty and negative gestures towards our
business, toward us,” she said.
A GoFundMe.com
campaign set up to help Haller offset the losses has raised nearly
$10,000 in two days.
(Related: Indiana
pizzeria that vowed not to cater gay weddings: God “has blessed us
for standing up.”)