A Christian-owned bakery harried through the courts for refusing to produce a cake endorsing same-sex marriage and a nurse driven out of her job for wearing a small cross. The two are apparently unconnected but have found themselves in the same news cycle this week.
The ‘gay cake case’, as it’s invariably billed, has been trundling along since 2014, when gay rights activist Gareth Lee commissioned Belfast-based Ashers Baking Company to produce a cake featuring the slogan ‘Support Gay Marriage’, the logo of the organisation QueerSpace, and Bert and Ernie, two Sesame Street characters ‘shipped’ as gay by some fans of the children’s TV series.
Ashers, whose owners are Christian, said it would be unable to complete the order because the message was at odds with their religious convictions. Lee claimed discrimination on sexual orientation grounds and triumphed in court and in an appeal. But these judgments were reversed by the Supreme Court in 2018, which ruled that the bakery had cancelled the order because it objected to the message prescribed for the cake, not because it was refusing Lee service as a homosexual.
The equality and human rights industries tend to see tolerance as something to be imposed on Christians and extended to everyone else
The case is back in the news after the European Court of Human Rights, to which Lee had gone to contest the Supreme Court’s verdict, declared
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