Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Straight Grandmother isn't buying Ted Cruz's canonization of antigay cake bigots

Margaret Sullivan's piece, A Grandmother On Wedding Cakes, in the Huffington Post's Gay Voices blog, dissects the cake wars issue, now being exploited by panderer-cum-demagogue Ted Cruz in a campaign video (see left). It is a reasoned, articulate and uncompromising analysis worth reading. An excerpt:
     Sixty-one years ago, my mother made my wedding cake -- a buttery white fruitcake with creamy icing. She assembled tiered cake pans, candied citron and pineapple, white raisins and blanched almonds, and then baked the layers over several days. Decorated with holly (Christmas wedding), the finished cake leaned like the tower of Pisa. But it was perfect, a labor of love from Mother to us. She even kept the top layer in her freezer for our first anniversary.
     Over time, she made the recipe for my sisters' and brother's weddings, and for our children's, until, in her late seventies, she forgot salt in one and decided she shouldn't make more.
     Were she still living, she would have rejoiced in the June Supreme Court ruling legalizing same sex marriages. And no doubt would have dreamed of making a wedding cake for her openly gay grandson, our son, when the right man comes along.
      The Blade's article about the Kleins' sending cakes to gay rights groups — not wedding cakes; eight inch rounds with red hearts on top saying "We really do love you!" — and their reasons for it reminded me of how special the cake my mother made us was. And how special all wedding cakes are. 
     ...As the mother of a potential gay groom who doesn't bake, the owners of Sweetcakes by Melissa would no doubt have declined my order for a wedding cake on the grounds that same sex marriage is contrary to their faith. So I fully understand how the lesbian couple reacted when the Kleins declined their request.

     ...Conditional love and second best cakes are not good enough for my son. Or anyone else's LGBT children either. That isn't equality or respect.

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