It’s just been announced by the Belfast Live website that the Christian bakers who refused to provide a cake with a pro gay marriage message on it have won their case at the Supreme Court in London.
The court found that Ashers Bakery did not discriminate against a customer due to the customer’s sexuality or political or religious belief which would be illegal but instead merely refused to provide a service that would go against the consciences of the owners of the bakery.
The Belfast Live site said:
The Christian owners of a bakery have won an appeal at the UK’s highest court over a finding that they discriminated against a customer by refusing to make a cake decorated with the words “Support Gay Marriage”.
Five Supreme Court justices allowed a challenge by the McArthur family in a unanimous ruling in London on Wednesday in what has become widely known as the “gay cake case”.
The legal action was originally brought against family-run Ashers bakery in Belfast by gay rights activist Gareth Lee, who won his case initially in the county court and then at the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal.
Announcing the court’s decision, its president, Lady Hale, said: “This conclusion is not in any way to diminish the need to protect gay people and people who support gay marriage from discrimination.
Lady Hale added: “The bakers could not refuse to supply their goods to Mr Lee because he was a gay man or supported gay marriage, but that is quite different from obliging them to supply a cake iced with a message with which they profoundly disagreed.”
This is a profound victory for common sense and for individual liberty and it is a massive slap in the face for an LGB and T movement that has shown itself to be rabidly intolerant of the views of those who may not agree with the lifestyles or the politics of the gay community. The gay rights activist Gareth Lee could have gone to any number of secular bakers who would have been fine with producing a gay themed cake but instead he went to a bakers that he must have known would object. The big question we all need to ask ourselves is why did Mr Lee not do this? Why go out of his way to pick on a baker that would have refused this order on the grounds of personal conscience unless he was trying to bully the baker’s into submission to his particular political view? I tend to lean to the conclusion that this Christian bakers was deliberately targeted for this sort of legalistic bullying and it is good to see that this sort of bullying by the LGB and T Left has been thwarted.
It’s been quite gratifying to see the discombobulation coming from the the lavishly rewarded and pampered diversity Establishment in Northern Ireland over this court result. Dr Michael Wardlow the Chief Commissioner of the Equalities Commission quango in Northern Ireland appeared to be floundering over this judgment and in the Belfast Live article kept banging on about the anti-Ashers results that came out of the lower courts, judgements that the Supreme Court have reversed.
Dr Wardlow seems to be mightily worried that business owners may now be able to be freely guided by their consciences rather than by the diktat of ideologically driven groups such as his own. Dr Warlow said: There is a concern that this judgment may raise uncertainty about the application of equality law in the commercial sphere, both about what businesses can do and what customers may expect; and that the beliefs of business owners may take precedence over a customer’s equality rights, which in our view is contrary to what the legislature intended.” This has indeed opened up uncertainty but it is not an uncertainty based on what businesses are and are not allowed to do, but instead the uncertainty is now on what level of political bullying these ‘equalities’ groups can get away with.
There are still some other judgments to be made in this case namely whether Ashers ‘directly discriminated’ against Mr Lee on the grounds of sexuality or religious belief and whether the McArthur family who run Ashers have had their European Convention human rights infringed. I hope that the entirety of this case against Ashers is thrown out and that businesses can once again decide for themselves who they will and will not serve and whether they can provide services to customers on a voluntary basis rather than having to provide a service with a rainbow painted gun pointed at their heads.
