It's just a cake, Laurel Bowman-Cryer used to tell her wife, Rachel. But three and a half years have passed, and the hate mail keeps coming.



Back in 2013, the owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa made headlines when they refused to make the lesbians' wedding cake. A state official, in a move that's redefined his political career, eventually ordered the bakers to pay $135,000.



The Bowman-Cryers have received thousands of Facebook messages, each one calling them fat or evil, the dumb lesbians who ruined those Christian bakers' lives.



As they waited for their daughter's school bus this May, Rachel's cell phone dinged with a new missive.



"I am buying up my ammo right now you filthy, ugly, disgusting, fat, stupid, cruel, anti-Christian piece of liberal scum," she read aloud. "I am getting ready for the war so I hope you have a good hiding place, you sick, disgusting, miserable, piece of degenerate lesbian scum."



The Bowman-Cryers say they never wanted the money, which remains locked in a government account. They say they never wanted a war.



For three and a half years, they have hidden, believing in time their names would disappear from the headlines. They didn't answer the phone. They declined hundreds of interviews, quit their jobs and stopped leaving the house.



Their silence has not protected them. As the Bowman-Cryers retreated, the fury over their case grew louder.



The bakers, Aaron and Melissa Klein, appealed their fines and hired former President George H.W. Bush's White House lawyer. They toured the country with presidential candidate Ted Cruz as the face of a new fight for business owners' religious freedom.



The legalization of same-sex marriage isn't the end of the story, the Kleins told crowds from Iowa to Washington, D.C. The government, they said, wants to force Christian business owners to help gay people marry. The solution, the Kleins warned receptive lawmakers, would be legislation protecting religious liberty. Arkansas, North Carolina and Mississippi have approved bills since then, curtailing the civil rights gay people fought to win.



"Filthy dirt bag," Rachel kept reading. "You are ruining this country, and we will not let you do it."



She scrolled to the next message, this one from a Saudi Arabian man who said their case had inspired men there to whip gay people with canes. They bought wedding cakes for the beatings.



The Bowman-Cryers try to shrug off the messages that call them fat and ugly. What they can't handle is the guilt, the nagging feeling that they've made life worse for gay people elsewhere. Were they responsible for the proposed laws in the South? For abuse in the Middle East?



It was never just a cake, the 32-year-old women realize now.



With the Kleins hoping to put their appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court, their case may yet shape the future for Christian business owners and LGBT customers across the country.



Now, for the first time, Rachel and Lauren have given extended interviews on the controversy -- spending hours with journalists from The Oregonian/OregonLive to share the impact the case has had on their lives.



The school bus rounded the curve toward the Bowman-Cryer's house. It stopped, and Rachel climbed the stairs to escort their 9-year-old home.



In the beginning, Lizzy and her younger sister were the reason the Bowman-Cryers married. The girls were the reason the couple had turned down interview requests. And this spring, the girls became the reason the Bowman-Cryers began to suspect they couldn't remain quiet forever.



***

Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian's $135,000 final order, issued last year, summed up the Bowman-Cryers' love story in legalistic terms.



"LBC and RBC are both homosexual females," he wrote. "They considered themselves a 'couple' for the 11 years preceding the hearing."

Rachel Cryer had pink hair and owned an art gallery when she met Laurel Bowman.

They met when they were 19 and Laurel Bowman was on medical leave from the Navy. A friend invited Laurel to a party but warned her not to fall for the folk singer hosting it. Most lesbians in Corpus Christi, Texas, had a crush on Rachel Cryer at some point.

When Rachel opened the door, "it was love at first sight, over for me," Laurel said.

Rachel had pink spiked hair and ice blue eyes. She owned an art gallery and was studying communications at college.

Laurel lacked the same sophistication. She kept her dishwater blonde hair cut military short and wore a dorky T-shirt that said "I will not kiss the boys."

Rachel made fun of the silly shirt. Within weeks, they were living together.

They had both grown up without a family. Rachel's mom kicked her out at 14 for being a lesbian. Laurel had bounced from home to home after her father and brother died in a car accident when she was 3.

Laurel proposed after a year, but Rachel turned her down. Rachel hadn't believed in marriage since her parents divorced when she was young. Besides, she said, it wasn't legal.

Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer in 2004.

They took discrimination for granted then. Once, a group of rednecks threw beer bottles and called them dykes. Another time, when Rachel came down with typhus, a nurse kicked Laurel out of the hospital room and told her their sin had made Rachel sick.



The couple were caring for Rachel's bedridden dad in 2006 when the television show "Rock Star: Supernova" came on. Every week, he and Rachel cheered their favorite contestant, Portland singer Storm Large. The brash queer icon spoke often of Oregon as a liberal utopia. When Rachel's dad died in 2008, she and Laurel headed west.



They didn't have much money, so they camped all the way to Portland. By the time they arrived, they were both ill and covered in splotches. They drove to the hospital and lied like they would have in Texas. They said they were sisters.



"The nurse saw right through it," Laurel said. "She said, 'Do you want domestic benefits, honey? You can go to the same room.'"



In time, they let their guard down. After her younger brother came out as gay, Rachel persuaded her mother to move with him to Portland. Her brother would be safer in Oregon, Rachel told them.



Laurel proposed every year, but Rachel kept saying no. Then they inherited two little girls, and Rachel changed her mind.



The couple had helped care for the girls as their mother, Laurel's best friend, underwent cancer treatment. When she died in 2010, Rachel and Laurel worried what would happen to the girls, then 3 and 2. Lizzy has cerebral palsy, autism and a chromosomal disorder that causes developmental delays. Anastasia has Asperger's and had stopped speaking after her mother died.



"So we stepped up," Laurel said.



The state allowed Laurel and Rachel to act as foster parents. Soon after, Rachel began thinking she wanted to give the girls stability like she and Laurel never had.



"I think it's about time we do that thing that you have been asking me to do," she said.



When Rachel called her mother to break the news, she squealed.



"I know where we are getting your cake," said Rachel's mom, Cheryl McPherson. "Let's call Melissa."

Rachel and Anastasia read books and eat snacks out on the lawn after school. Anastasia, 7, is an advanced reader who speaks several languages. June, 2016 Beth Nakmaura/Staff





***



Laurel and Rachel had bought McPherson's wedding cake at Sweet Cakes by Melissa a few years before. It was McPherson's sixth marriage. At that tasting, the family later testified in court, they joked with Melissa Klein about McPherson's impulsive way with men.



Rachel and Laurel had been together eight years by then. McPherson had known her fiancee only a few weeks.



Two years later, Rachel and her mother still dreamed about Melissa's "raspberry fantasy cake," a two-layer, white butter cake baked with raspberries and topped with white chocolate. The mother and daughter had spent so many years estranged, they thought buying the same cake could be a way to bond.



They ran into Melissa at the 2013 Portland Bridal Expo.



"I was just like, 'Hey, we are finally going to do it,'" Rachel testified in court. "'I know I said I was never going to do it, but Laurel and I have decided we are going to get married, and we want you to make the cake.'"



Melissa testified later that she has only a "brief memory" of talking to Rachel's mother at the busy expo. But Rachel believes the baker remembered she was a lesbian.





Melissa told them to email her to set up a tasting. But when Rachel and her mother went in a few days later, Melissa wasn't there. Her husband, Aaron, met them instead.



"What are the names of the bride and groom?" Aaron asked.



Rachel giggled.



"It's two brides," she said.



The Kleins declined through their lawyer to speak with The Oregonian/OregonLive. But they testified that they'd agreed, after Washington legalized same-sex marriage in 2012, to "stand firm" if a gay or lesbian couple ever asked them to bake a cake for their wedding. The Kleins ran a Christian shop. Their pastor prayed over the bakery when it first opened, and Melissa Klein listened to religious music as she decorated cakes.



'I think we may have wasted your time," Aaron Klein told Rachel. "We don't do same-sex weddings."



Rachel cried as her mother led her out. McPherson told her they would find another baker, then drove away. As they approached the traffic light, McPherson said she had to go back. Rachel stayed in the car as her mother charged back in.



McPherson said she told Aaron Klein she had once discriminated against gay people, but her feelings changed after both of her kids came out.



The two sides still disagree about Aaron Klein's reply. He says he quoted a Bible verse from Leviticus, "You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination." McPherson recounted it differently.



"He said, 'I'm sorry, ma'am,'" McPherson told Rachel. "But your children are an abomination."



Rachel sobbed most of the evening. She told Laurel what happened, then headed for bed. She worried her mother would reject her again. She felt like the world deemed her unworthy of love.



"Please stop crying," Laurel told Rachel. "I'll fix this."



Rachel didn't look up. About 11:15 p.m., exhausted and angry, Laurel Googled "discrimination in Oregon."



She thought the website that came up on her phone was a review page similar to Yelp. She created an account, and her phone number and address auto-filled the boxes. She described what happened, her thumbs mashing extra letters into the words, then hit send.



Laurel didn't think about the comment again until a stranger sent her a Facebook message two weeks later. Aaron Klein had posted a notice from the Oregon Department of Justice. It said the agency was investigating a complaint from Laurel. The notice included Laurel's address and phone number.



"This is what happens," Aaron Klein wrote, "when you tell gay people you won't do their 'wedding' cake."



***



Soon, it seemed everyone knew their names. Aaron Klein told his story on talk radio. News crews broadcast from outside the Bowman-Cryers' apartment. National shows begged them for interviews. Gay-rights advocates protested the bakery.



Laurel's late-night complaint had landed in the midst of a new civil rights battle. As states legalized gay marriage, florists, photographers and pastry chefs who opposed it were fighting back.



Same-sex marriage wasn't legal in Oregon yet, but the state still banned business owners from turning people away because of their sexual orientation.



By the end of the first day, their inboxes were filled with hate. Hundreds of messages promised war or death.



"Can't wait to see you die and go to hell one day," one said.

Gay people wrote, too, and accused them of whining, of setting back the marriage battle.



Laurel wanted to speak out. The Kleins were on every news channel, telling a story she believed was wrong. She agreed with their gay critics: It was just a cake. Just a month before the Kleins refused Rachel, a lesbian they knew had been shot to death while sitting with her girlfriend in a Corpus Christi park the Bowman-Cryers used to frequent. The girlfriend was also seriously wounded in the attack.



But Rachel wouldn't go on television.



They hoped to adopt Lizzy and Anastasia. Their foster agreement required them to protect the girls, to keep their whereabouts private. Rachel feared they'd be breaking state rules.



"The whole point of us getting married was to give these kids a better life," she said.



They asked the Department of Justice to drop the complaint. Laurel said it had all been an accident. She was angry and inept with technology. About a month later, the state's attorney abandoned the case.



But the damage was done. The Kleins continued doing interviews, and every week, 100 more hateful messages arrived. Rachel ignored the family and disappeared into the bedroom to cry. She and Laurel began sleeping with a pillow between them.



The girls needed a strong mother, Laurel argued, not one who let strangers destroy her.



In the summer of 2013, when Laurel and Rachel married, a European newspaper published their wedding photos without permission. The couple figured a friend or relative leaked the photos, so they stopped socializing. Rachel quit her job at the Oregon Children's Museum and stopped performing.

A portrait of Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Crier rests on the mantle at the Bowman-Cryer home. June, 2016 Beth Nakamura/Staff



Finally, after eight months, the Bowman-Cryers contacted the Bureau of Labor and Industries, the state agency charged with enforcing Oregon's civil rights laws. They had seen Avakian, the labor commissioner, on TV urging people to file complaints with his office.



Maybe, the couple figured, the bureau could ask the Kleins to drop the publicity tour.



State workers determined the bakers had broken Oregon law. In past cases, the agency had awarded money to people they decided had been wronged.



The Bowman-Cryers said they didn't want any "blood money." All they wanted was an apology.



The bakers declined to meet with investigators. State workers told the Bowman-Cryers money was the only thing that could make them "whole."



Labor bureau spokesman Charlie Burr declined to discuss the bureau's conversations with the Bowman-Cryers and their attorney. He said his agency is tasked with assessing damages.



"We don't just represent the Bowman-Cryers," Burr said. "We represent the people of Oregon as a whole."



When the trial began in March 2015, the state prosecutor asked an administrative law judge to award $75,000 to each woman.



***



Just before the trial, Laurel was diagnosed with stage 2 cervical cancer. It wasn't terminal, but the chemotherapy made her second-guess their silence. She read the hate mail and felt pelted, like she was playing dodgeball, but taped to the wall.



"If I don't have a lot of time, I need to teach my children how to be strong and stand up," she told her wife.



Rachel refused. On TV, she remembered, the Kleins had said they were also receiving death threats. Their car had been vandalized twice. Speaking out at events such as the national Value Voters Summit didn't seem to be protecting them either.



Laurel still felt sluggish as the trial began. She used a cane, limping past the group of pastors who gathered to pray over the proceedings.



To win, the state prosecutors had to prove that Aaron Klein's refusal to serve Rachel had caused $150,000 worth of emotional damage to the Bowman-Cryers.



Lawyers spent a few hours questioning the Kleins about the facts of the case. But they kept the Bowman-Cryers on the stand for days, grilling the women about every bad thing that had ever happened to them.



They asked Laurel about an abusive relative, Rachel about the time she took pain pills after tearing a ligament. They blamed the media for the Bowman-Cryers' stress. They suggested their time in Texas had damaged them.



"And isn't it true that the reason you feared for your safety was because of a long history of persecution of homosexuals in America?" the Kleins' attorney asked Rachel. "And that didn't have anything to do with whether you got a cake or not, did it?"



"I think getting denied a cake is just an extension of another persecution of homosexuals in America," she answered.



Avakian agreed. In July 2015, at the judge's recommendation, he ordered the Kleins to pay $75,000 to Rachel and $60,000 to her wife.



***

Anastasia, left, Rachel and Laurel spend time in the family's backyard garden. June, 2016 Beth Nakamura/Staff



For years, the couple searched for a new apartment, but landlords kept turning them down.



"As soon as they'd find out who we were, they'd say we don't want that traffic on our property," Laurel said.



They eventually found someone willing. The landlord told the Bowman-Cryers she understood controversy: She had been friends with Terri Horman, the woman who made international news after her 7-year-old stepson, Kyron, went missing. The landlord offered a nondescript ranch house on a quiet, curvy road on the outskirts of town.



Finally, the Bowman-Cryers thought, they could dodge news crews. But their names stayed in the headlines.



The Kleins were touring the country, speaking at conferences and presidential campaign events. They had raised more than $500,000 and still sold the raspberry fantasy cake online, but the Kleins warned evangelicals in North Carolina that lesbians had forced them to close their physical bakery. A month later, the Southern state passed a law repealing LGBT civil rights laws.



Back in Oregon, Avakian launched a bid for secretary of state. Nearly every story about him mentioned the case. Editorial boards urged voters not to choose him, casting the $135,000 he awarded as excessive. Similar cases in Colorado and Washington had concluded with negligible fines -- and with virtually no political heat.



Conservative websites suggested the Bowman-Cryers had colluded with Avakian. But they had never received the money, which will remain in escrow as the Kleins appeal, and they had never spoken to Avakian.



"Do you think we should meet him at some point?" Laurel asked Rachel on election day.



"No," Rachel said. "I don't want to further any of the conspiracy theories."





Rachel Bowman-Cryer cleans houses to earn money for the family. Here, Rachel readies a steam cleaner in preparation for work. June, 2016 Beth Nakamura/Staff

Avakian had raised nearly half a million dollars in 2016. Meanwhile, the Bowman-Cryers barely scraped by.



Rachel cleaned houses and bought her kids' school clothes with credit cards. When she applied for food stamps, the intake worker knew her name. Hadn't she just won a lot of money from those bakers, the worker asked before denying the benefits.



They felt they had to vote for Avakian but went to bed in mid-May without checking the election results. Avakian won the Democratic primary. Their names would stay in the news until November 2016, at least, when he runs in the general election.



***



Two weeks later, Rachel drifted toward their garage and began folding paper flowers.



She had started an event-planning business almost by accident.



A few months before, she had created a Mad Hatter-themed tea party for the girls' birthdays. A face painter working the event loved the way Rachel had painted umbrellas to resemble giant mushrooms. She asked if Rachel could plan her wedding this summer.

While folding paper flowers in the garage for an upcoming wedding she was doing decorations for, Rachel looked through Facebook at her own wedding photos for inspiration. June, 2016 Beth Nakamura/Staff

Rachel had considered helping LGBT couples plan weddings. The face-painter wasn't gay, but Rachel figured she couldn't refuse just because she was straight.



Rachel looked through Facebook at her own wedding photos for inspiration. She flipped past a shot of the ruby red slippers she ordered special and another of the bouquet she made from brooches. She stopped on her favorite.



Lizzy had begun crying right before the ceremony. Rachel and Laurel hugged her and sang "You Are My Sunshine." The photographer snapped the picture.



"I feel like Melissa Klein doesn't believe that my family should celebrate being a family, shouldn't recognize in front of our friends and family our commitment to each other," she said, tearing up. "It's not, 'I'm denying you a wedding cake.' It's, 'You don't deserve to have this. You don't deserve to have this part of your life.'"



Rachel cried until a knock on the garage door interrupted.



"Hey," her neighbor yelled. "The school bus has been waiting."



She rushed outside, then reappeared with Lizzy.



"Do you want a snack, baby?" she asked.



Lizzy flapped her hands. She can speak in whispers and single syllables, but Rachel has learned to decipher waves as answers.



They ate pineapple. Rachel turned on music and tried to smile. Before the cake incident, she performed regularly. Now she sang only for the girls.



"Ring ring ring, Bananaphone," she crooned.



The song ended, and Lizzy motioned toward the computer. Like every other 9-year-old girl in America, she wanted to hear the theme song from "Frozen."



"I know, I know," Rachel said. "Can you sing?"



Lizzy hummed along.



"Out loud," Rachel whispered.



Lizzy covered her mouth. Rachel sang, "Let it go. Let it go. Can't hold it back anymore."



The girl tried to muster something. The song played. "It's funny how some distance makes everything seem small, and the fears that once controlled me can't get to me at all."



Lizzy forced out a deep breath as the song hit its crescendo. She covered her mouth again but began to sing.



"The past is in the past!"



Lizzy threw her hands up and dove into her mother's arms.

Rachel and Laurel agreed early on they would not have kids. But they had always been the kind of people willing to drop everything to help someone. When Laurel's best friend in Portland was diagnosed with cancer, they began spending all their free time helping take care of the girls. Lizzy, the oldest (shown here with Rachel), has cerebral palsy, autism and a chromosomal disorder that causes developmental delays. She couldn't sit up or speak when Rachel and Laurel met her, but they spent afternoons working with her. June, 2016 Beth Nakamura/Staff



***



Rachel told Laurel she was ready to face the world. They agreed this year's Portland Pride parade would be a first step. They hadn't attended since the girls were little, before the case.



They sat down Anastasia, now a precocious 7-year-old, to explain.



"When two people of the same sex love each other like me and mommy love each other, that is being gay," Rachel told her. "We are celebrating how far we've come."



She tried to relate it to her daughter's life. In Texas, they wouldn't have been able to foster her. In Oregon, they could adopt the girls and marry.



Then, a week before Pride, a gunman killed 49 people in an Orlando gay bar. The hate mail flooded in again, and Rachel wavered. Maybe it was too dangerous.



"Fear is no way to live," Laurel said. "We need to retake our name. Our lives."

Anastasia shows the temporary tattoo from the Portland Pride march to Laurel. June, 2016 Beth Nakamura/Staff

A few days later, they wound through the crowd, the girls giggling at every splash of rainbow. Most people wore costumes or colorful shirts. Laurel looked at her black polo then over at Rachel's navy shirt. She stopped a vendor selling rainbow flags and bought the biggest one he had.



"Mama, wave the flag," Anastasia said. "Hoist the sails!"



Dykes on Bikes, the motorcycle club created in the 1970s as an act of lesbian defiance, revved down the street. The first rider had drawn on her arm with magic marker, "I am not afraid."



Rachel plopped down in a chair and watched as Anastasia danced with the flag. She checked her phone. Six new messages. Family members had told them to delete Facebook, but they wouldn't. It was their only social connection, the best way they knew to share photos with the girls' relatives.



"Your fight for cake led to death," Rachel read. "Do you know how sick that is?"



Drums gave way to pop music then cheers drowned out the sound of both. Rachel's mother and brother danced on the sidelines. The parade passed her by.



Rachel looked up, her eyes sad and red.



"Laurel," she said. "Take this."



She handed over her phone and picked up a tiny rainbow flag. She waved it and began to sway.



Laurel thumbed through Rachel's messages. "Happy Pride," she read. "Hope you don't die."



The parade ended, and Laurel suggested they head to the waterfront festival. The girls skipped toward a booth filled with toys and books. Rachel followed while Laurel slipped away. She pulled both phones from her cargo pants. She had 12 new messages. Rachel had 15.



"Of course your Facebook is private," she read. "You live a life of sin then hide in it. You're going to burn in hell for what you're doing."



She deleted them then looked at her family. Anastasia was hula-hooping. Lizzy had spread a dozen toys around her.



Laurel caught Rachel's eyes, still the same ice blue that grabbed her 12 years ago.



"I love her," she said. "I'd do it all over again if I had to."

Laurel, top, and Rachel Bowman-Cryer in the couple's home. June, 2016 Beth Nakamura/Staff





- Casey Parks

- 503-221-8271

cparks@oregonian.com @caseyparks