Pastor Josh Feuerstein may be facing legal action after recording a Florida bakeshop refusing his order and posting the clip online.
According to a report from Breitbart.com, Sharon Haller, the owner of Cut the Cake bakery, is threatening to take the pastor to court after their establishment started receiving intimidating phone calls and death threats. Their Facebook page was also flooded with hate messages after Feuerstein's post on YouTube.
"People (are) telling us that we need to kill ourselves and all kinds of stuff, and we're just afraid for our business and our safety," she said.
The situation became so bad that the police had to be involved.
Cut the Cake has reportedly reached out to the FBI to see whether the pastor could be charged for a hate crime.
The skirmish originated from a phone call made by the pastor to the bakery asking them to make a sheet cake with the message "We do not support gay marriage" on it.
Offended by the message and thinking it was a prank call, the owner simply turned down the order and was surprised to learn that a recording of the phone conversation was used in Feuerstein's post.
"I wanted to see if it was actually a double standard; if a gay-friendly bakery and one that advertised themselves as so on pro-LGBT wedding sites would actually bake a cake that went against their principles," Feuerstein said.
"It obviously violates her principles, so she doesn't feel like she should be forced to make the cake. And yet there is all of this hoopla because Christian bakeries think that they shouldn't be forced. We're getting to the place in America now where Christians are not allowed any form of freedom of speech," he said.
The pastor, in an interview with Local 6, claimed that he made the video not to cause damage to the bakery's image but to see whether if there was a double standard on the issue of religious freedom. He also said that he too received death threats as a result of the incident.
It comes hot on the heels of debates on religious freedom following protests staged by groups against Christian establishments refusing to perform services that are against their religious beliefs. Some establishments have been forced to shut down while some business owners have been charged in court for upholding their faith conviction.
