The View had Candace Cameron Bure on as guest host recently, and the actress famously got into a bit of a tiff with regular host Raven-Symone. The point of departure between the two women had to do with Aaron and Melissa Klein, of Sweet Cakes by Melissa bakery in Oregon. The bakery had refused to make a wedding cake for Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer because they are both women.
Candace Cameron Bure commonly represents an ultra-conservative Christian viewpoint on the show. She is the sister of evolution-denier Kirk Cameron. But Raven-Simone called the actions of the bakery discrimination, drawing a parallel with civil rights.
“The Oregon law bars businesses from discriminating against sexual orientation, race, disability, age or religion,” Raven Symone said, “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.’”
Candace Cameron Bure countered, “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.”
@candacecbure Saw your bit on the baker's who refused service to lesbians. You're as whack as your brother. Disappointed.
— GolemOnTheShelf (@DanielBen_Del) July 7, 2015
She offered further elaboration.
“[The bakery] didn’t refuse to bake the cake because of [the couple’s] sexual orientation,” Candace Cameron Bure continued. “In fact, they baked cakes for them previously. They had a problem with the actual ceremony because that — the ceremony — is what conflicted with their religious beliefs. They are saying that they stand for marriage between a man and a woman.”
The pair of hosts seemed at loggerheads, but revealed later that they hugged it out during a commercial break. Candace Cameron Bure later told The Church Boys podcast, “I wasn’t there to debate gay marriage or straight marriage. It was about these bakers and their religious freedoms and the freedom of association.”
DJ Tanner from Full House CRUSHES the Ladies of The View on Gay Marriage http://t.co/yYkApryBCl pic.twitter.com/p3QB697Q2T
— Young Conservatives (@YoungCons) July 8, 2015
SHAME on @candacecbure for her anti-gay stance on #TheView! At least @ravensymone was there to our defense. #LGBT pic.twitter.com/fIgL2p8WNz
— Jacob Shaver (@Jacob_B_Shaver) July 8, 2015
Candace Cameron Bure further told The Blaze, “I wanted to be as truthful and honest and speak in love as much as I could, but just be factual about things. And that’s really where I was coming from.”
But she also says that she got support, of a sort, from her “very close gay friends.”
“My favorite part were all the texts that I got from my … very close gay friends that were saying, ‘We love you and we can all have different opinions, and you fight for what you believe in and I’m going to fight for what I believe in,’” she said.
“It’s always interesting to hear where everyone’s coming from. We can learn to have respectful conversations with people that we don’t agree with.”
