A Florida bakery refused to put the word ‘trans’ on its cake after being asked by two social workers who wanted to deliver sweets to an event they organized for the local transgender community. .
Dandelion Hill, co-founder of the Orlando-based nonprofit Peer Support Space, visited Colonial Town to buy a celebratory cake on April 26 while en route to the organization’s Trans Joy event.・I stopped by Publix.
Hill, who is transgender and uses the they/them pronouns, asked the bakery to write a simple, “wholesome” message on the sheet cake with pink icing: “Transgender people deserve joy.” Asked.
After the bakery workers hesitated, Hill soon began to sense that something was wrong.
“People who work at the bakery said, ‘I’ll be right back,'” Hill told the Thursday Post. “I was simmering with anxiety because I had this feeling of, ‘Oh, I feel like something is going on, something must be wrong.'”
After a wait that “felt like an eternity,” the bakery manager “came back and looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘I’m sorry I can’t write.'” Publix took a stand on the issue. We are not allowed to take it,” Hill said.
The refusal shocked Hill and “closed his mind.”
“I’m trying to send a message of hope to the community, and I feel like I’m going to get shot down at the very moment,” they said. “It really just hurt.”
Hill said Yasmin Flasterstein, who co-founded Peer Support Space with Hill, then emerged from the store’s restroom to “take over” the conversation and tell the bakery workers: joy. “
Many employees reiterated that there was nothing they could do as it was company policy.
Hill noted that an employee who told her she had a transgender friend “tearfully” agreed to write that “people deserve joy,” and she “didn’t think it was the staff’s fault.” No,’ he said.
The girl then put pink icing on them and left a space on the top of the cake for them to write “trans” themselves, and did it in the car, Hill said.
Since the incident, Mr. Flasterstein has been in contact with Publix executives to see if company policies exist that would prohibit employees from writing “trans” on cakes.
“Somewhere there was a miscommunication, [the employees] I really felt like they couldn’t write something like this,” Hill said. “All we want to know is where we went wrong, and we just want clarification. Where are you from?”
In an email sent from Publix to Flasterstein, she said: Shared with The Washington Postthe grocery giant admitted that employees should have agreed to write the messages.
“It is our policy that our employees may write statements that they believe are not copyrighted or trademarked, support charitable causes, are factual, or have a positive connotation. ,” Publix said in an email.
“As you pointed out in our Facebook conversation, our employees should have responded to your request,” the company said. Publix previously issued an apology in a comment posted to Facebook’s Flasterstein about the incident.
Publix did not immediately respond to the Post’s request for comment.
In a letter to the store, Mr. Flasterstein said he put more pressure on the company, demanding an apology to Mr. Hill, who “beared the brunt of this incident and broke down in tears in front of other shoppers.”
Hill said the incident occurred at a particularly “hostile time” for Florida’s transgender community.
Just last week, the Florida legislature passed a bill banning transgender people from using public restrooms in connection with their gender identity.
Sunshine also passed legislation that would allow health care providers and insurers to deny services “based on conscientious objection,” according to The Washington Post.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis also signed a so-called “Don’t Call Me Gay” bill in March, which would ban classroom teaching about gender identity through third grade. A new bill would expand a law that would make it illegal for educators to talk about their gender identity through eighth grade.
peer support space focuses on the LGBTQ community founded by Hill and Frasterstein in the wake of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting (a targeted attack on a gay nightclub that left 49 dead and 53 injured). It is a non-profit organization.
