The Sweet Cakes bakery, at the centre of a legal battle which saw it fined $135,000 has raised over $348,000 in donations.
A gay couple were awarded $135,000 in damages after the Sweet Cakes bakery refused to bake a wedding cake for them in 2013 on the grounds that it was against their religious beliefs.
The owners of Sweet Cakes, Aaron and Melissa Klein, started a GoFundMe page asking supporters to help them with their legal costs.
GoFundMe closed the campaign saying that it violated the site’s terms and conditions, but not before the fundraiser had racked up $109,000 in donations. The decision to pull the crowdfunder from GoFundMe came down to the fact that laws had been violated. GoFundMe allowed Sweet Cakes to take the funds already collected minus its fees and taxes.
Another site, Continue To Give has allowed the campaign to go on and the Kleins have received over 232% of the $150,000 they’re asking for. The page encourages users to “help the Kleins through this hard time as they fight for religous [sic] freedom”.
The page’s mission statement reads: “Every American should be free to live and work according to their faith without the government punishing them for doing so.”
Continuetogive.com take 3.9% + $0.60 per donation. According to the site, the Sweet Cakes fundraiser has had 7611 donations. Meaning that it will have grossed around $25540.60
In April owners of a Pizza parlour in Indiana said that they would refuse to serve a gay wedding, saying it would never deliver pizza to a gay wedding. A crowd funded was started and raised over $800,000.
