LGBT activists ‘disappointed’ as UK Supreme Court sides with bakery in ‘gay cake’ row [PinkNews]

LGBT activists ‘disappointed’ as UK Supreme Court sides with Ashers bakery in ‘gay cake’ row

Nick Duffy 10th October 2018, 10:52 AM


Daniel McArthur, managing director of Ashers Bakery and his wife Amy McArthur (Charles McQuillan/Getty)

LGBT+ activists say the UK’s Supreme Court has set a “dangerous precedent” by ruling in favour of a bakery that refused to make a cake supporting gay marriage.

The ruling handed down by the UK’s Supreme Court on Wednesday (October 10) overturned lower court rulings against Northern Ireland’s Ashers Baking Company.

The Supreme Court quashed claims that Ashers had discriminated against gay man Gareth Lee on the grounds of sexual orientation by refusing a cake order bearing the slogan “support gay marriage.”

The five justices said: “The bakers could not refuse to supply their goods to Mr Lee because he is a gay man, but that is quite different from obliging them to supply a cake iced with a message with which they profoundly disagreed.”


Office workers and shoppers stand in line at Ashers Bakery on October 24, 2016 in Belfast, Northern Ireland (Charles McQuillan/Getty)

The judgment, which cited the bakers’ human rights protections for “right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion,” has been met with disappointment from LGBT+ activists.

John O’Doherty, director of Northern Ireland’s Rainbow Project, said in a statement to PinkNews: “We are disappointed by this judgment.


Click here for the rest of the article:
https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2018/10/...urt-sides-with-ashers-bakery-in-gay-cake-row/

 

I kind of get that as a reasonable position holding with the old principle 'hate the sin - love the sinner'. I am not sure courts in Australia would rule the same way. It is a big world and I am sure there are some (many) bakers who would bake the cake. Or they could order a plain cake and apply the decoration themselves.

 

At long last the sensible ruling that should have been made when the case first came to court. Voltaire, I think it was, that said "I disagree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it" is a principled position. What is definitely not a principled position would be something like, what the Gay Rights movement was advocating, i.e: Unless you actively endorse and agree with my opinion by complying with my demands, I shall force you to agree with me and my campaign, by bringing a law suit against you.

Sanity has fortunately prevailed. The shop owner was not forced, against conscience, to produce a political slogan with which he disagreed. He did not refuse to serve the customer, he merely refused to be complicit with the owners political views. (Fortunately there is not yet a 'law' which compels us to agree with another's opinion and therefore do their bidding.). The customer was not refused on the grounds of his sexual orientation, but on the grounds that he was making an unreasonable political, social or religious demand with which the baker was unwilling to comply.

I think the baker won the case on the point that he had not refused to bake or ice a cake, per se, on grounds of the customer's sexual orientation, but had only refused to ice 'that particular slogan' on it. I think that is rightly, a business decision. A baker clearly should have the right to decide what is and what is not provided in his bill of fare. For the court to have ruled otherwise would theoretically open the possibility for customers of restaurants who really enjoy eating oysters being able to demand that every restaurant serve them oysters on pain of prosecution on grounds of discrimination against oyster gourmets. This would necessitate every food outlet having oysters on their menus all year round in case an oyster gourmet comes in.
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We truly must be in the end times as I just agreed with a Tiffy post.

 

Is it possible to disagree on everything? Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.