The seemingly discriminatory antidiscrimination ruling against Christian bakers Melissa and Aaron Klein took an even more outlandish turn as media outlets began claiming that the $135,000 fine levied against the couple was not, in fact, due to their refusal to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex wedding because it violated their religious convictions, but rather because the Kleins had allegedly publicly released the home address of the lesbian couple who had brought charges against them. By the ruling authority's own records, this claim is absolutely false.
The nugget of truth that inspired the media's false assertions stems from the initial complaint that one of the women filed against the Kleins with the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries. Though she claimed she didn't see it, the form included a disclosure indicating that, once filed, all information on the complaint, including her name and address, would become public record.
When an incredulous Aaron Klein received the complaint, he posted a screenshot of it on his newly created Facebook page, which at the time only had 17 friends, with the caption: "[T]his is what happens when you tell gay people you won't do their wedding cake."
"I did not even realize the address [and] phone number [were] on there," Aaron Klein told The Blaze. "I got it around noon. I put it on my Facebook page around two. Facebook got a complaint from [the couple's attorney] and [Facebook] pulled it down before five. They pulled my page down."
When Klein's page was restored, he posted, "I was just notified that the [complainants'] info was on the document I posted. Totally didn't think about that, was a mistake and I apologize. I hope nobody used it for anything bad."
While the lesbian couple included the Facebook incident in their sweeping "damages" report used to renumerate everything from "excessive sleep" to "mental rape" to "uncertainty" allegedly caused by the Kleins refusal to bake the same-sex wedding cake, Brad Avakian of the Bureau of Labor and Industries specifically refused to grant any damages based on the social media mishap. It was the complainant herself, after all, who chose to submit her address to the public record.
Media outlets have since retracted these patently false claims against the embattled Klein family, but as the war of disinformation and hateful "tolerance" continues to rage in this case and others across the nation, the damage has already been done.
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