We Are Not Gay Bakers

[Bazile]

Another one of these rulings

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-32791239

This is a bit odd though

//His party colleague David McIlveen tweeted: "Utterly sickened that a Christian owned business has been hauled over the coals for refusing to promote something that is not legal in NI."//

[naomi24]

Ludwig poses a very relevant question. Does being gay make people a special case? Staff working in pharmacies can, on religious grounds, refuse to serve birth control products.

[Ellipsis]

The whole point is that being gay doesn't make people a special case ...

[Svejk]

Marshwarble /// It has gone to court, Baza. Keep in the loop. ///
The hypothetical case, that Baza was responding to, hasn't.

[Svejk]

So I can demand a Muslim baker makes me a cake with a picture of Muhammad on it. Not that I would because I'm mindful of other peoples' sensibilities.

[naomi24]

Ellipsis, if being gay doesn't make people a special case, how come heterosexual people who can't get their medication from religious shop assistants aren't able to sue?

[Ellipsis]

Naomi, I haven't come across that example before, but I would assume either:

a) the pharmacy does not sell contraception at all or
b) another assistant sells the contraception

In this case, the shop did sell cakes, just refused point blank to sell the cake the customer asked for.

[Ellipsis]

> So I can demand a Muslim baker makes me a cake with a picture of Muhammad on it.

Interesting example. That might be worth a go, but a better test would be if they would bake you a cake promoting atheism ...

[Khandro]

Ellipsis; No I'm not saying that. You are referring to small grubby hand-written notices, usually written on the inside of woodbine packets, pinned up in newsagents shops before (and after) the race relations act of 1965; half a century ago.
I stand 4-square behind the baker's decision not to go against his conscience, which may be hard for you to understand, but unless more people have the courage of their convictions, society is IMO sleepwalking into meltdown.

[naomi24]

Ellipsis, The point is people of religion are allowed to discriminate with impunity - but not if the customer is gay.

[mushroom25]

indeed naomi - the cases of certain supermarket checkout staff refusing to process alcohol or bacon purchases spring to mind.

[naomi24]

The cases mentioned above are not hypothetical, but just out of interest, I wonder what would happen if a company refused to put a political slogan on the cake? Is that discrimination? Only recently a garden centre put out a sign to say that Conservative voters would not be served. That appears to be legal.

[Khandro]

Cavehill; ^ Probably a tough week of conscience searching and decision making.

[Retrochic]

Surely this case highlights that discrimination against the Gay community is above the Law? The Customer was in fact asking the baker to decorate a cake celebrating something illegal in that country (Gay marriage). This is Law, not Religion. I can't understand the Courts decision, save for perhaps they disagreed with the reason why the baker would not decorate the cake.

[anotheoldgit]

joggerjayne

23:15 Tue 19th May 2015

For 'Best Answer'

[Ellipsis]

> I stand 4-square behind the baker's decision not to go against his conscience, which may be hard for you to understand, but unless more people have the courage of their convictions, society is IMO sleepwalking into meltdown.

That's fine, I do understand conscientious decisions. Unfortunately for you, and the baker, such decisions of conscience / belief / opinion / prejudice / intolerance [delete as applicable] are not aligned with the law of the land, particularly when it comes to running a business.

> Ellipsis, The point is people of religion are allowed to discriminate with impunity - but not if the customer is gay.

No, I think if the bakery had supplied the cake, perhaps decorated by somebody who didn't hold their religious convictions, they would not have had a problem. Similarly, if a supermarket sells you alcohol (or chooses not to stock it), or a pharmacist sells you contraception (or chooses not to stock it), that's also OK - and different to this case where the baker sold cakes, but nobody in the business was prepared to sell a cake to this customer.

[ludwig]

ellipsis
// Then tell me it wasn't a decision based on religious bigotry - and that is the problem. //

A number of people including you seem to be missing the point. They may well be religious bigots, however, THAT ISN'T AGAINST THE LAW.

The thing that's against the law is DISCRIMINATION - ie treating a person or group of people DIFFERENTLY from another person or group of people for no valid reason.

Now, I'm absolutely certain they would have refused to bake the cake irrespective of whether the customer was gay, straight, black, white, whatever. In other words no-one was discriminated against. No-one was treated differently to how anyone else would have been treated.

This is quite clearly a different state of affairs to the Bed and Breakfast case, when the gay couple were refused entry to the B&B specifically because they were gay. A clear cut case of discrimination on the grounds of sexuality.

If you can't ( or more likely won't ) see the difference there, then I give up.

[Bazile]

ludwig

The point you've been making is this case is crystal ( well to me at least )

this may further help -

//"We've said from the start that our issue was with the message on the cake, not with the customer and that we didn't know what the sexual orientation of Mr Lee was, and it wasn't relevant either. We've always been happy to serve any customers who come into our shops.//

[ludwig]

^ Precisely Bazile. You can't be guilty of discriminating against people if you treat them all the same.

I'm struggling to know which part of that some people (including the judge in this case) don't understand.

[Zacs-Master]

'The thing that's against the law is DISCRIMINATION - ie treating a person or group of people DIFFERENTLY from another person or group of people for no valid reason.'

Precisely my point. the cake and the gay nature of the customer is (as i'm sick of pointing out) irrelevant. The DISCRIMINATION was on religious grounds in this case.