On ABC’s The View former child actresses Candace Cameron Bure (who played D.J. Tanner on Full House) and Raven-Symoné (The Cosby Show, Hanging with Mr. Cooper, and That’s So Raven) had a debate about the Christian bakers in Oregon who were recently fined $135,000 for refusing to make a wedding cake for two lesbians. To add insult to injury they were also given a gag order.
Bure is a professing Christian. Raven-Symoné is a lesbian. The exchange got just a wee bit tense.
Here is the video:
And transcript:
Raven-Symoné: The Oregon law bars businesses from discriminating against sexual orientation, race, disability, age or religion, and to me, it’s the same exact thing that they did back in the day saying that black people couldn’t do certain things because it’s my religious belief.
Bure: I think you are comparing apples to oranges here. I don’t think this is discrimination at all. This is about freedom of association, it’s about constitutional rights, it’s about First Amendment rights, we do have the right to still choose who we associate with, but they did not refuse to bake cake…
Raven-Symoné: I refuse, I refuse to associate myself with you right now.
Bure: They did not…
Raven-Symoné: Is that okay?
Bure: It’s in the Constitution. They didn’t refuse to bake the cake because of their sexual orientation, in fact…
Raven-Symoné: they baked cakes for them all throughout the whole time
Bure: …they had baked cakes for them previously. They had a problem with the actual ceremony because that,the ceremony, is what conflicted with their religious beliefs.
Whoopi Goldberg: Where they invited to the wedding?
Bure: No it was to provide a service. They have the right to refuse service…
Goldberg: Apparently they don’t according to Oregon… but wait.
Cameron: Freedom of association, it wasn’t against their sexual orientation, that’s where…
Raven-Symoné: For me, what I’m understanding you saying is that their religious beliefs says that two people of the same-sex can not be in a relationship. Is that what they are saying?
Bure: They are saying they stand for marriage as a man and a woman.
Raven-Symoné: Sexual orientation also goes hand in hand with marriage in that situation. If it was a man and a woman and one was black and one was white and they discriminated against we can also go back into the Constitution which has had many amendments… they should, they should have to take care of this family as well.
Michelle Collins: $135,000 seems like a lot of money though…
Cross talk
Bure: It’s unconscionable that they charged a $135,000 fine for what? A $200 cake. It is so wrong.
Collins: Who wouldn’t want to make a lesbian wedding cake? How easy would that be? You make a big house…
Cross talk
Nicole Wallace: This debate is going to play out over the next 18 months… Hobby Lobby was the Supreme Court case this year that said if you have a business and you are Christian and it violates your beliefs you don’t have to give your employees… you don’t have to pay for their birth control pills. So there is some legal precedent. This did not come from a court and this case will be appealed and we may see this in the Supreme Court. This is, this is a very emotional, I just saw the bout that erupted between the two of you (pointing at Bure and Raven-Symoné). People that… who may believe in traditional marriage think that a business has the right not to serve someone. People who think that the anti-discrimination laws should force every business to serve everyone liken it to the lunch counters in the south when blacks weren’t served. There are emotions on both sides, but the law I think is a little bit up in the air and we’ll see…
Bure: Here’s the other thing I really wish we could do as a society, as a culture, as a country, is to respect that we have opposing views.
I appreciate Bure’s poise and thoughtful defense of religious liberty, and I really, really, really wish there were more people in Hollywood like her.
