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Whole Foods Goes After Gay Slur Cake Accuser

Whole Foods Goes After Gay Slur Cake Accuser

Whole Foods alleges a hoax.

Last week, a self-identified gay pastor claimed a cake he purchased from grocer Whole Foods bore the message, “Love Wins Fag,” in blue frosting.

This story smelled funny from the get go.

Why? Because Austin is one of the most LGBT-friendly locals in the country. It’s basically Portland, Texas. Chances of this kind of thing happening in Austin are maybe .00001%. Not saying it’s impossible, just improbable.

In any case, accuser Pastor Jordan Brown made a video showing the cake in what he claims was a sealed box, unopened since he returned home from the store. Despite the clear window atop the cake box, Brown claims he did not notice the word “fag” until he reached his vehicle in the grocery store parking lot.

Brown also claims he reached out to Whole Food when he got home and that Whole Foods responded saying their employees did not write the nasty message. Brown then reached out to legal counsel. With representation from Kaplan Law Firm PLLC, Brown filed suit (included at the bottom of the post).

Whole Foods is having none of it.

Tuesday, the grocer released a statement saying they, “believe his accusations are fraudulent and we intend to take legal action against both Mr. Brown and his attorney.”

After reviewing security footage, they contend the UPC label (pictured on the side of the box in Brown’s video), was affixed to the top of the box when Brown checked out. The only words adorning Brown’s cake when he received it were “Love Wins,” says Whole foods:

  • Our bakery team member wrote “Love Wins” at the top of the cake, which was visible to Mr. Brown through the clear portion of the packaging. That’s exactly how the cake was packaged and sold at the store. Whole Foods Market has a strict policy that prohibits team members from accepting or designing bakery orders that include language or images that are offensive.
  • Mr. Brown admits that he was in sole possession and control of the cake until he posted his video, which showed the UPC label on the bottom and side of the box.
  • After reviewing our security footage of Mr. Brown, it’s clear that the UPC label was in fact on top of the cake box, not on the side of the package. This is evident as the cashier scans the UPC code on top of the box, which you can view here.
  • We stand behind our bakery team member, who is part of the LGBTQ community, and we appreciate the team members and shoppers who recognize that this claim is completely false and directly contradicts Whole Foods Market’s inclusive culture, which celebrates diversity.

Whole Foods published a 57 second clip of the security footage which showed Brown checking out and the position of the UPC label on the cake.

In this shot, Whole Foods claims you can see Brown approaching the register and what appears to be a giant label on top of the cake box:

jordan brown gay cake slur whole foods love wins fag hoax law suit legal action security footage

Contrast with Jordan’s home video:

Screen Shot 2016-04-19 at 2.41.44 PM

And an image Brown tweeted Monday:

Brown’s suit here:

Brown v. Whole Foods

Since, Whole Foods is threatening its own suit, more to come.

Follow Kemberlee on Twitter @kemberleekaye

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Comments

The “handwriting” between Love Wins and Fag is not the same.

I’m sure you mean he “reached out to legal counsel.”

When he picked up this special order cake, he would surely have checked to see it was what he ordered, and he could have easily seen the cake through the clear top of the box. That’s why they package them this way.

The biggest mistake this Social Justice Warrior made? He picked too big a target. Better to have gone after a mom&pop bakery, as it likely would not have its own legal department.

Even the frosting tip was wrong. Note the difference in size.

(Yeh. I have kids who are pro-level pastry people.)

The church of pro-choice will always be a fringe cult.

“=” bullshit is a pro-choice or selective principles movement.

The real injustice is how this is taking the focus and attention away from actual racism like the University of New Mexico’s Seal!

conservative tarheel | April 19, 2016 at 5:15 pm

so now what ….
are there lawsuits involved?

Another sodomite claiming to be victimized where no offense was given. Everything is proceeding according to plan, the insane are acting insanely.

inspectorudy | April 19, 2016 at 5:23 pm

I guess ramming LGBT down our throats is not enough. They want to make money in the process. If I were a baker I could come up with some great LGBT cakes! They just haven’t a clue how I could show their life’s choice on top of the cake I sold them.

Pastor Jordan Brown should consider changing his identifier to Rev. Jordan Brown as the “Rev” seems to work pretty good for scam artists like Reverends Jesse and Al!

I think it was an inside job. How did he get the right icing color?

The tip off to me was the price. $11.99 is the plain frosting price on that size of cake in most stores, no charge was added for decorating.

The writing is on the wall for accuser Pastor Jordan Brown. “mene mene tekel upharsin” – “You have been weighed in the balance and have been found wanting.

I think that the last letter is actually a “C” – everything at Whole Foods is freakin’ amazingly costly.

Can one of the lawyers here tell me on what grounds Whole Foods can sue not only Brown but his attorney?

    genes in reply to tarheelkate. | April 19, 2016 at 7:18 pm

    not a lawyer, but I would say libel, slander and fraud.

      tarheelkate in reply to genes. | April 19, 2016 at 7:56 pm

      The thing is that an attorney represents what his client claims. If the client came to the attorney and told this bogus story, and the attorney filed suit based on it, is the attorney liable for the fraud and libel, or is only the client liable?

        Olinser in reply to tarheelkate. | April 19, 2016 at 11:35 pm

        Lawyers filing fraudulent lawsuits is indeed actionable.

        However you have to prove that they knew the lawsuit was fraudulent before they filed it.

        That seems very unlikely in this case. Yes, the allegations are provably false, but only by information that Whole Foods had.

        Suing the gay POS is easy and likely a solid lock for judgement.

        Getting the lawyer? Very unlikely since technically no information he had PROVED the lawsuit was fraudulent.

    Ragspierre in reply to tarheelkate. | April 19, 2016 at 9:36 pm

    Just a quick and dirty answer to your question…

    Texas Rule OF Civil Procedure 13, as well s our ethical code, requires that an attorney make a “reasonable inquiry” into a matter before we sign any pleading.

    To fail in this is sanctionable. Sanctions can be quite sever

    Additionally, while attorneys enjoy a broad “privilege” that makes us immune from most civil penalties for what we within litigation, that is not a universal band-aide; and I have successfully sued other attorneys for joining in a fraudulent scheme with their clients.

Video Brown provided showed the UPC on the side of the box, Whole Foods video shows the cashier scanning the UPC on the top of the box. Indicates tampering by someone and Brown stated that the box didn’t leave his possession.

“The biggest mistake this Social Justice Warrior made? He picked too big a target.”

Actually his mistake was to pick a target that’s both to big and too small. He picked a large corporation with the resources to fight back. But he targeted one particular retail outlet with a bakery section that isn’t much larger if at all than a mom and pop store.

So Whole Foods already knows who exactly decorated the cake. And at the same a corporate legal department to bring to bear on the hate crime hoaxer. And if they need the help of outside counsel they have the money to bring aboard all the hired guns they need.

As an aside, my curiosity was piqued by the fact this hoaxer presents himself as some sort of pastor. Pastor of what? According to his Twitter profile he’s “Founder & Pastor – Church Of Open Doors. New Church Plant in Central Austin.” I don’t know if he’s affiliated with the Baptists or not, but he’s certainly appropriated the Baptist International Ministries “Open Doors for Church Planting” initiative language.

So it appears that he’s claiming to be a Christian pastor of some sort. Which automatically means he’s willing to lie. You simply can not read the Bible and honestly conclude it approves of homosexuality or anything like SSM.

So you must dishonestly twist the meaning of the Bible and first claim it only addresses homosexuality in six places in the Old and New Testaments. Which superficially can be done if you confine yourself to English translations of the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. Then the claim is that the Bible was really condemning inhospitality, or pagan temple prostitution, or gay prostitution in general, or the greaco-roman practice of pederasty and corrupting boys.

But the attempt to dishonestly spin scripture is destroyed when you actually look at the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. Because if the authors of scripture meant to just condemn those things there were words they could have used to get the point across. For instance the Rabbis who translated the Torah into Greek for the hellenized diaspora Jews and native Greek speaker Saul of Tarsus (later St. Paul) would have used paiderastes (lover of boys) or paidophthoros (corrupter of boys). But they didn’t. They used the words malakoi (literally “soft ones” to refer to the passive sex partner) and arsenokotai (a compound formed from the Greek words equivalent to the Hebrew term “men who lie with men” i.e. as with women in the Holiness Code in Leviticus).

At this point they’re reduced to babbling silly nonsense about how none of the original authors of the Torah, the Rabbis who translated it into the Greek Septuagint, the authors of the New Testament, or the Rabbis, clerics and scholars who studied and commented on them over the past three or four thou, Aramaic and Greek. Only contemporary “scholars” who are actually activists with an agenda really know.

And as I said you can only make a very superficial argument even if you confine yourself to the English translations of the Bible. It’s true that there are only a half dozen or so verses of the Bible that condemn homosexuality, and that Jesus never personally condemned it. But every time the Bible references homosexuality it condemns it. Every single time. The Bible only refers to heterosexuality approvingly and then only within marriage. And Jesus doesn’t directly condemn homosexuality because as He makes clear several times He was bringing his message to the Jews. It was the job of His disciples to carry His message to other peoples. And every Jew was fully aware that the Mosaic law condemns homosexuality.

So when the Pharisees ask Him if it’s lawful for a man to divorce his wife in Mark 10 or Matthew 19 the conversation goes like this:

“3 “What did Moses command you?” he replied.

4 They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.”

5 “It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,” Jesus replied. 6 “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’[a] 7 ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife,[b] 8 and the two will become one flesh.’[c] So they are no longer two, but one flesh. 9 Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.””

Before answering about divorce Jesus first refers to Mosaic law, then turns to God’s plan for creation as expressed in Genesis 1 and 2, and ties the nature of marriage to God’s plan. This would have been the place for Jesus to clarify the meaning of the law that condemns homosexuality that it doesn’t condemn “committed gay relationships” but only ritual temple or conventional gay prostitution or what have you. That marriage is not only between a man and a woman. After all, he’s correcting their misunderstanding of divorce.

Jesus knows the Torah. The Pharisees know the Torah. But instead of correcting their understanding of the strictly heterosexual nature of marriage, He confirms and reinforces that understanding. And then at this point the “gay Christians” and their SSM advocate allies destroy any shred of remaining credibility to their claim to even be Christians at all by saying no one in Biblical times had any concept of of committed same-sex relationships. Which reduces Jesus to some iron-age Jewish mystic instead of the eternal, omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent God that is the foundation of Christian theology.

My purpose isn’t to try to convince anyone that marriage is between a man and a woman “because the Bible says so.” I’m not even trying to convince anyone the Bible is true.

The point is if you’re gay or otherwise reject aspects of Biblical morality then the only intellectually honest thing to do is reject Judaism and Christianity. It is the height of hypocrisy and deeply dishonest, though, to masquerade as a Christian while rejecting the divine inspiration and spiritual authority of Christian scripture. And this guy is pretending to be a pastor.

Anybody who’d go that far to fake reverence for scripture in order to mangle it and mislead people into thinking the Bible approves of behaviors it clearly condemns as sinful is exactly the kind of guy who’d try to defraud and defame an entity by faking a a hate crime.

    Paul in reply to Arminius. | April 19, 2016 at 7:56 pm

    I think your post just sent the progs scattering for their safe spaces. Trigger Warning!

    Arminius in reply to Arminius. | April 19, 2016 at 8:09 pm

    I still haven’t had my laptop professionally cleaned of malware. I’ve been busy with life; tax day was yesterday, and today was surgery on my dog to get the tumor my vet discovered last Thursday removed (hopefully the results of the tissue and blood analysis will be in by the end of the week).

    I don’t think most of the editing my self-aware laptop, Skynet, did to my comment are so extreme they distort beyond understanding what I was trying to say.

    But this isn’t very clear:

    “…who studied and commented on them over the past three or four thou, Aramaic and Greek. ”

    It should have said the revisionists who would reinterpret the clear meaning of the text have to make the ridiculous claim that those “who studied and commented on them for the past three or thousand years didn’t actually understand Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek.” Even if they were native speakers of those languages.

    As I said the other changes my nemesis Skynet made appear to be minor.

      DaMav in reply to Arminius. | April 19, 2016 at 8:37 pm

      Hope your pooch’s surgery goes well

        Arminius in reply to DaMav. | April 19, 2016 at 10:23 pm

        Thanks. It went well. The vet had to amputate a digit on one of his fore paws, and she went pretty far up his foot to make sure she didn’t miss any of the tumor (or any of the infection; that can do the same kind of damage but tumor is far more common). Right now he’s crashed on the sofa, knocked out by what the vet’s assistant says are some pretty good drugs.

        I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the lab results will come back with the good news that this will be the end of it. As it is when he heals he won’t even miss what they cut off.

          JoAnne in reply to Arminius. | April 20, 2016 at 1:11 am

          Wishing a speedy, complete recovery for your pal. As to your post, I will have to reread it tomorrow. That was a lot to absorb!

          Arminius in reply to Arminius. | April 20, 2016 at 5:49 am

          Romeo my Gordon Setter thanks you for the good wishes. If I keep on top of his two to three times a day meds and his bandage changes he should be in good shape. Remarkably, someone has invented a self-adhesive bandage wrap that dogs won’t chew! I was convinced that he’d have to wear one of those big plastic disc collars/hoods if any bandage is going to stay on, but it isn’t the case.

          I realize that was a lot to absorb; I tried to be brief but people can and have written whole books on the subject. It’s not really central to the topic of a gay hate crime hoax but I believe the information sheds light on the subject nonetheless. I read the court documents and I was irked that this guy keeps asserting that he’s a pastor (by the way, not affiliated with the Baptists and I believe it’s relevant that he misleadingly appropriates their verbiage). As if that gives him special moral auhtority. As TX-rifraph said a couple of hours before I commented there are a lot of people who call themselves Reverend who are fraudsters. He mentioned Rev. Al and Jesse. I think the most apt though, is Rev. Wright of Obama’s Trinity Unite Church of Christ.

          It’s clear to me that he’s perpetrating a fraud. He’s claiming the box was “sealed” as if an adhesive price tag is some sort of tamper proof lock. Yet it’s clear that the “seal” in his online rant isn’t in the same place as it was when he checked out at the register. Nor does that look like the same box in WF’s and his video. Nor is it believable that he could fail to notice the the word “FAG” prominently displayed in the center of that large plastic window before leaving the store.

          It’s clear that there’s a lot of the Bible that this Pastor has to ignore as unimportant. If the Ten Commandments, specifically the 9th Commandment which says “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor,” meant anything to this so-called Pastor he wouldn’t nave filed fraudulent papers with the court. There are a lot of general prohibitions against lying throughout the Old and New Testaments; those mean nothing to “Pastor” Brown. But they would to anyone who claims to be a Christian who actually believes in the Christianity of the Bible.

          But then I thought that’s to be expected because no person can make an honest argument that homosexual activity is compatible with Christianity. Not even “committed same sex relationships in the form of SSM. Some of the arguments are unconsciously dishonest; the person making the case that SSM is compatible with Christianity wants to believe that so badly they’ve convinced themselves. But that view is contradicted by parts of the Bible they’d rather ignore. When confronted with an obstacle they can’t reason past, they’ll make an appeal to emotion. They’ve emoted past it, and they’ll beg the people they’re trying to persuade to do the same.

          Others, as I mentioned, simply don’t believe in the Doctrine of the Incarnation, i.e. the foundational doctrine of Christianity that the second person of the Trinity without reducing His deity “became flesh” (the Latin root of the word incarnation refers to flesh, as you’d know if you’ve ever had Carne Asada) and took on a fully human nature. They’ll admit the Biblical text doesn’t support their views but they’ll say that’s because those first century Jews including Jesus were products of their time and we now know better. This too is dishonest; if you don’t believe Christ is the Son of God then you have no business pretending you’re a Christian.

          But many if not most people who claim to be Christian and argue that SSM and homosexuality isn’t condemned as sinful but can somehow be “celebrated” in Christianity are making consciously dishonest arguments. Unlike those Christians who sincerely want to believe what they say, and attempt to form a coherent and consistent argument, the consciously dishonest SSM advocates will make arguments that clearly contradict each other. It doesn’t matter; they are apparently saying “try this argument; if it doesn’t work, try this one.” They’re on a political mission, not a theological one.

          Clearly this “pastor” and gay-slur forger falls into that category. Which is why I thought of Barack Obama’s old spiritual mentor Rev. Wright. Wright’s TUCC is the church most closely associated with black liberation theology. Even the inventor of black liberation theology, James Cone, has said so. And Cone is quite clear; he doesn’t believe Christ is who he says he is. If Christ is who he says he is, blacks must reject him and invent a more useful Christ. As he says on page 63 of his book, “A Black Theology of Liberation:”

          “There is no place in black theology for a colorless God in a society where human beings suffer precisely because of their color. The black theologian must reject any conception of God which stifles black self-determination by picturing God as a God of all peoples. Either God is identified with the oppressed to the point that their experience becomes God’s experience, or God is a God of racism.”

          God is subordinate to and serves Cone’s politics. Which means his politics is his god. His god is just a tool of emotional coercion. This is true of all liberation theologies. And it’s true of “gay pastors” and “gay Christians” whether they’re conscious of it or not. Certainly it’s true of someone who would violate the Commandments in order to perpetrate a fraud by faking a hate crime.

          amwick in reply to Arminius. | April 20, 2016 at 7:53 am

          You should write a book, seriously.

          Arminius in reply to Arminius. | April 20, 2016 at 2:25 pm

          Other people have written the books. Looking back I probably could have done withoutI a lot of the supporting evidence. If you look at the Jesus of the Bible, he disappointed a lot of people starting with John the Baptist in Matthew 11. When John was in Herod’s prison he sent one of his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come or should we expect another?”

          Because he expected a Jesus like the Jesus that James Cone later invented; a liberator. His idea of a Messiah was someone who’d drive out the Romans. So basically he was asking, “What the hey are you doing? Why am I still in prison; Get on the stick, or I can’t believe you’re the Messiah.” Jesus told them to report the miracles they saw him do ant to tell John “Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.” In other words, He is the one John was waiting for, but John was wrong about what He came to do.

          Later, in John 18, Jesus further clarifies that His kingdom is not of this world.

          Liberation theologians come along and say, “F.U. Jesus, then I can’t use you. So I’ll reject you and invent a Jesus whose kingdom is of this world. It’s true of Cone’s black Jesus and the various Latin American strains of liberation theology and their violent campesino Marxist revolutionary dashboard Jesuses.

          In the past ten years or so some people have been busy inventign a gay dashboard Jesus that they can use to advance their cause. So this guy is a pastor in the same sense Al Sharpton is/ not at all. If Sharpton can stage the Tawana Brawley rape hoax then this guy Brown can fake a wF cake hoax. They’ve invented a Jesus that says so.

healthguyfsu | April 20, 2016 at 2:55 am

Looks like someone was offended by whole foods’ prices!

I am so glad that someone or some company is willing to carry the fight to the hoaxer’s camp. Too often the hoax is just brushed off and perpetrator of the hoax doesn’t even get a slap on the wrist.

If it weren’t for fake hate , I’d have no hate at all
Gloom, despair , and agony on me

Richard Aubrey | April 20, 2016 at 9:57 am

About twenty of these back, the way to bet on a hate crime was “hoax”.

Char Char Binks | April 20, 2016 at 10:33 am

Even a gay black pastor can over reach when it comes to crybullying.

Most of these things things are hoaxes. Just one more that the MsM will bury.

“We stand behind our bakery team member, who is part of the LGBTQ community, . . .”.

Game over, man. Game over!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdqyG3CcoLM

Show him no mercy, Whole Foods.