When a small Southern bakery made rainbow-themed cookies to celebrate Pride Month, there was a swift backlash.
On June 2, Confections, a tiny store in Lufkin, Tex., shared a photo on its Facebook page of heart-shaped rainbow sugar cookies with the caption, “More LOVE. Less hate. Happy Pride to all our LGBTQ friends! All lovers of cookies and happiness are welcome here.”
Confections bakery had never made a Pride-inspired cookie in its 11-year history, mostly because a customer had never thought to order one. So when a patron asked Cooley whether she planned to sell rainbow cookies for LGBTQ Pride Month, she happily obliged.
“Honestly, we just made a rainbow heart cookie,” Cooley told CNN. “We do not deserve all this attention. We give gladly and perform small acts of service or kindness without expecting anything in return, be it acknowledgment or praise; we certainly don’t expect hatred.”
“I was simply trying to be inclusive,” she said. She settled on heart-shaped sugar cookies, with glossy, rainbow-striped frosting. Cooley shared a photo of six of them on the bakery’s Facebook page with the caption, “All lovers of cookies and happiness are welcome here.
The backlash was swift and shocking, she said. A customer canceled an order of five dozen cookies, and a “significant amount of followers” un-liked the bakery’s Facebook page. For a bakery that nearly closed several times throughout the pandemic, she said, the negative feedback was devastating. “I wanted to show that we love all people,” Cooley said. “I knew some people wouldn’t like it, but I didn’t expect this reaction.”
She addressed the flood of criticism on the bakery’s Facebook page and let customers know that there would be an “overabundance of cookies” available for purchase from the canceled order. Her heart felt heavy from the “hateful message” her bakery had received, she said. “Hopefully tomorrow will be better,” she wrote.