It used to be, if you were so inclined to Google “gay cake” the first articles to appear were about the controversy over a baker in Colorado who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple about to marry — a case that has gone to the United States Supreme Court.
But that was in the days before Hamilton’s Chris Farias put in a special order at Cake & Loaf bakery on Dundurn Street South — before it all blossomed on social media around the world, and was covered by online publications such as Buzzfeed in the U.S., which headlined a story: “In Canada, when you ask for a gay cake, you get a gay cake.”
Farias, creative director at Kitestring, a branding digital agency in Hamilton, is marrying Jared Lenover next summer, and wanted to order a cake to celebrate the first anniversary of their engagement.
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He spoke with baker Quinn Pallister about his order.
He asked for a gay cake. Not a cake leaning on the gay-side, or shades of gay, but the “gayest cake ever.”
The description was a bit vague at first, she says, but the more he talked, she got it.
“He was so kind and excited and passionate,” she says. “He said basically he wanted a cake that, if you sent it to a country where gay marriage is illegal they would set it on fire.”
It took her a few hours to create a rainbow-coloured extravaganza that included words like inclusive, pansexual, queer, proud, and fierce, plus “Love is Love” and LGTBQ.
And she topped it with — what else? — a golden unicorn horn.
“I felt the horn would capture his spirit … so happy and bright.”
(For the record, Farias says unicorns are his favourite mythical animal.)
He says he never imagined the cake would make such waves, but he urged Facebook friends to share pictures of the creation, “to show our neighbours to the south we support them.”
He’s been flooded with supportive responses, including Facebook comments and Twitter direct messages from the Southern U.S. and as far away as Senegal and Germany.
A woman in Brazil, named Melina, wrote that she cried “happy tears while reading the Buzzfeed post” and that Farias has “increased my love for Canada. I hope this amazing country can be my home one day.”
The co-owner of Cake & Loaf bakery, Nicole Miller, said they are happy “to bring this sort of attention to Canada, and Hamilton, because we are proud to be an inclusive and loving community.”
The mission to make the cake rang especially true with Pallister, whose mother married another woman two years ago.
“I have two moms, so this (issue) is close to me, that somewhere in the world someone was denied a cake because of who they were in love with.”