Oregon Bureaucrat Denies Christian Business Owners First Amendment Rights

The strange case of an overzealous politician and bureaucrat hunting down Christian business owners and denying them freedom of association and religion has morphed into a complete repudiation of the First Amendment.  A Christian couple was ordered by Oregon Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian to “cease and desist” from speaking or publishing their thoughts about the commissioner’s thuggery in driving them out of business because they didn’t want to participate in a gay wedding.

The Daily Signal reported the following:

“This effectively strips us of all our First Amendment rights,” the Kleins, owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa, which has since closed, wrote on their Facebook page. “According to the state of Oregon we neither have freedom of religion or freedom of speech.”

 The cease and desist came about after Aaron and Melissa Klein participated in an interview with Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins. During the interview, Aaron said among other things, “This fight is not over. We will continue to stand strong.”

Lawyers for plaintiffs, Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer, argued that in making this statement, the Kleins violated an Oregon law banning people from acting on behalf of a place of public accommodation (in this case, the place would be the Kleins’ former bakery) to communicate anything to the effect that the place of public accommodation would discriminate.

“The Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor and Industries hereby orders [Aaron and Melissa Klein] to cease and desist from publishing, circulating, issuing or displaying, or causing to be published … any communication to the effect that any of the accommodations … will be refused, withheld from or denied to, or that any discrimination be made against, any person on account of their sexual orientation,” Avakian wrote.

Commissioner Brad Avakian is a typical government thug straight from old school USSR, and that is basically what Hans Von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation stated:

It is exactly this kind of oppressive persecution by government officials that led the pilgrims to America. And Commissioner Avakian’s order that the Kleins stop speaking about this case is even more outrageous—and also a fundamental violation of their right to free speech under the First Amendment.

 Avakian would have fit right in as a bureaucrat in the Soviet Union or Red China. Oregon should be ashamed that such an unprincipled, scurrilous individual is a government official in the state.

If there is one thing we must learn, it's liberals have no shame.

Source:

http://dailysignal.com/2015/07/02/state-silences-bakers-who-refused-to-make-cake-for-lesbian-couple-fines-them-135k/

The Federal Government Slave Ship

Point a gun at a person’s head and chances are he will do what you say. Redistributive laws are equivalent to an armed, street thug extorting money from hapless shopkeepers.  Do as he says or else.

The biggest crime syndicate in American history is run out of Washington D.C.  These slavers have sawed off their moorings – limited government as dictated by the U.S. Constitution, and are rounding up victims to row their treasure laden ship.  Hard working citizens will propel this luxury vessel at a steady and brisk pace.

Listen closely.  Do you hear all those politicians and their cronies partying in first class?  You can barely make out their laughter and champagne glasses clinking as they toast each other’s success.  It’s kind of hard to discern all that celebration over the steady drumming by our bureaucratic task masters.

What’s that moaning?  Why that’s the teat squawkers and illegal aliens in steerage.  They’re constantly grumbling and demanding taxpayers pick up the pace.

 

Sign up for Obamacare expires in February.  Record numbers of people are being forced to sign up or else.  No one can afford health insurance without a government subsidy.  It’s either pay a penalty, or go on substandard Medicaid; that is if you qualify.

Row, slave!  Row!  

      

Legend of the Successful Bureaucrat

Who says cartoons aren't instructive.