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Would GoFundMe Have Shut Down MLK’s Account?

As reported in a previous article, GoFundMe shut down an account that was raising money for Sweet Cakes by Melissa because her bakery refused to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding and an agent of the state government fined the owners $135,000.

What argument did the folks at GoFundMe used to cancel the account? In a written statement, GoFundMe claimed that it was “because the campaign violated the policy against raising money ‘in defense of formal charges of heinous crimes, including violent, hateful, or sexual acts.'”

Read more: GoFundMe Joins the Gaystapo to Shut Down Dissent.”

Actually, the cancellation came when pro-homosexual groups pressured GoFundMe. These groups were incensed that Memories Pizza received more than $800,000 in funding in a similar fund raising campaign. 

So where is the violation? The owners of the bakery stood up for their personal beliefs, a First Amendment right that includes freedom of religion and speech. Article 1, Section 3 of the Oregon Constitution states the following:

Freedom of religious opinion. No law shall in any case whatever control the free exercise, and enjoyment of religeous [sic] opinions, or interfere with the rights of conscience.—

Here’s the wording of Article 1, Section 8:

Freedom of speech and press. No law shall be passed restraining the free expression of opinion, or restricting the right to speak, write, or print freely on any subject whatever; but every person shall be responsible for the abuse of this right.—

There was no violence, hate, or sexual acts done by Sweet Cakes by Melissa. The owners of the bakery simply refused to assent to someone else’s “expression of opinion” with an opinion of their own.

The irony here is thick. It was wrong for a bakery to bake a cake for a same-sex couple out of principle, but it’s OK for GoFundMe to deny the service of its company to that same bakery.

Read more: I Donated $100 to Memories Pizza to Defy the Gaystapo.”

How is it possible for someone who followed what Hillary Clinton and President Obama believed just a few short years ago be now considered hateful?

Yes, there were “formal charges,” but the charges are being appealed. A person is innocent until proven guilty, and one way to prove innocence is through the legal process which requires funding.

The pro-homosexual sycophants at GoFundMe have put the folks at Sweet Cakes by Melissa in an inextricable Catch-22.

Let’s go back to the 1960s when Martin Luther King, Jr. was leading marches for full civil rights for blacks. King and others were in direct violation of the law. Rev. King even spent time in jail. On April 10, 1963 Circuit Judge W. A. Jenkins issued an injunction against “parading, demonstrating, boycotting, trespassing and picketing.”

Birmingham_MLK_mugshot

King and his associates decided that it was just to disobey an unjust law. In his famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” King wrote: “One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”1

Fining a bakery $135,000 for not baking a cake for a same-sex wedding is an unjust sanction that is “cruel and unusual punishment.” The Eighth Amendment specially states “excessive fines” shall not be “imposed.”

The question is, would GoFundMe have shut down an appeal for funds to get Rev. King out of jail and to give him an opportunity to make his case through the courts? Given what GoFundMe did with Sweet Cakes by Melissa, to be consistent, it would have to, but it wouldn’t because ideology trumps what is just.

Forcing a business to perform work for what is believed to be an immoral act is unjust, and “one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”

  1. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” April 16, 1963. []
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