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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