Chrisitian bakers lose appeal case

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bobpc30 said:
Was reading about the ruling earlier on. The gay bloke looks like a smug **** who knew what he was doing.
I do not see the problem. The family who run the bakery have been shit on.
In short, being gay over rules someone else's religious beliefs which have been ignored.
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Harry Angstrom said:
It's an interesting one though. Gay marriage is not permitted by law in Northern Ireland so a support gay marriage is a political slogan that is counter to the law of the land. Refusing to put such a statement on a banner or a cake is not an act of discrimination. If it was who were the bakers discriminating against?
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it's called freedom of speech mate.
 
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Billy Rocket said:
This piece nails it imho.

Refusing To Bake A Cake With A Political Statement Upon It Is Not A Crime
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The Mec Journal
4 hours ago

This week, a Christian couple who run a bakery and refused to make a cake with the statement “support gay marriage” on it lost their latest court appeal. Now when I first heard this story and didn’t realise the facts, I assumed the bakers had refused to bake the cake because the people asking for it were gay. It was only later that I realised they had refused to bake the cake because they disagreed with the pro-same-sex marriage political statement written upon it.

If they had refused to bake that cake because their clients were gay or they refused to make the cake because it was for a gay wedding, then like that other couple who refused to let a single room out to a gay couple because of their Christian views, I would support them facing the wrath of the law. Except this wasn’t one of those situations. From my understanding, these bakers were targeted because they were known to have Christian beliefs (which everyone knows I criticise every chance I get, especially on their moronic views on sexuality) and were asked to bake a cake with a political statement they knew the bakers would disagree with.

Daniel McArthur, one of the bakers at Ashers said this to the BBC: “We had served Mr Lee before and we would be happy to serve him again.

“The judges accepted that we did not know that Mr Lee was gay and that he was not the reason we declined the order.

“We have always said it was not about the customer, it was about the message.”

This is very different to discrimination. People do not agree with same-sex marriage. I think they are wrong and disagree with them. I believe their views are out of date and bigoted. However, I do support their right to hold that view and to stand by that view, no matter how wrong I believe it is. With this ruling, they say it is about equality, but I wonder if the court would have ruled against this couple if they can refuse to ice a cake because the client wanted a fascist message placing upon it… People can be discriminated against, but not ideas and I believe in this case, the bakers refused to ice the cake because they refused to agree with the message, with the idea behind it.

This case highlights the balance between protecting minority groups from discrimination and persecution and balancing that with individual belief and ideas. On one hand, I believe that the bakers were wrong in their actual belief, but they have served the man in the past, therefore they were not discriminating on his sexuality.

As Maajid Nawaz has said: “But … as in this cake case, refusing to endorse an *idea* that promotes equality – though also wrong – should remain legal, so that free speech can challenge it.

“No matter how silly a Muslim fundamentalist can be (and silly they are) they should be allowed to refuse drawing the prophet Muhammad on a cake, just like these Christians should have been left alone.

“I have no problem with ‘gay cakes’, nor ‘blasphemous cakes’, but I don’t want to force religious fundamentalists to do anything but tolerate liberals like me.
No idea is above scrutiny, no people are beneath dignity.”

Although seriously if you are against gay marriage, it is rather simple. Don’t get gay married and leave the rest of us alone.
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All other things being equal I would agree with a ruling that refusing to endorse political movements you disagree with is NOT discrimination.

What is actually happening here though is that gay activists have targeted people who belong to, support and fund organisations who have actively prevented gay marriage being legal. So this is not a matter of the Christian bakers deserving to be left alone. If they had left gay people alone in the first place they would not be in the firing line. If Northern Ireland had not actively sought to undermine the UK's national law on discrimination there would not need to be a campaign to legalise gay marriage.

Effectively the gay people in question are using a flaw in the way is currently applied to combat a contrary flaw in the way the law is currently being applied. I don't think anyone here would act differently if their rights were being unjustly taken away, ie use every legal means at their disposal to secure their rights.

The bigger picture here is that there is a conflict in the laws on discrimination in Northern Ireland and until they address that, disputes like this will continue to arise. They have two choices: they can accept the overall UK laws against discrimination and scrap their law against gay marriage, or they can pursue whatever means they must to disengage entirely from the legal framework that prohibits discrimination, even if that means a complete exit from the UK and opening the door to all kinds of other discrimination such as sectarianism. The latter option would completely destroy the province, but if that's what they want then good luck to them.

If they want to argue for the right to practice their religion then I look forward for them trying to explain firstly how their stance on gay marriage contradicts their religion, and secondly how their right to practice their religion can only be fully achieved by taking the rights of others away.
 
Cockney Mackem said:
All other things being equal I would agree with a ruling that refusing to endorse political movements you disagree with is NOT discrimination.

What is actually happening here though is that gay activists have targeted people who belong to, support and fund organisations who have actively prevented gay marriage being legal. So this is not a matter of the Christian bakers deserving to be left alone. If they had left gay people alone in the first place they would not be in the firing line. If Northern Ireland had not actively sought to undermine the UK's national law on discrimination there would not need to be a campaign to legalise gay marriage.

Effectively the gay people in question are using a flaw in the way is currently applied to combat a contrary flaw in the way the law is currently being applied. I don't think anyone here would act differently if their rights were being unjustly taken away, ie use every legal means at their disposal to secure their rights.

The bigger picture here is that there is a conflict in the laws on discrimination in Northern Ireland and until they address that, disputes like this will continue to arise. They have two choices: they can accept the overall UK laws against discrimination and scrap their law against gay marriage, or they can pursue whatever means they must to disengage entirely from the legal framework that prohibits discrimination, even if that means a complete exit from the UK and opening the door to all kinds of other discrimination such as sectarianism. The latter option would completely destroy the province, but if that's what they want then good luck to them.

If they want to argue for the right to practice their religion then I look forward for them trying to explain firstly how their stance on gay marriage contradicts their religion, and secondly how their right to practice their religion can only be fully achieved by taking the rights of others away.
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So you agree it isn't discrimination unless the people refusing are cunts.
 
Harry Angstrom said:
So you agree it isn't discrimination unless the people refusing are cunts.
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Personally I think the whole icing a cake case is frivolous and stupid. What would be more appropriate would be for all the Christian groups to be forced to pay the legal fees of all the gay people they are campaigning against, pay damages for every homophobic offence committed in the region and libel costs for everything their representatives say to besmirch the reputation of gay people in the region. Probably charge them for the additional costs the UK government has to bear in sorting out the constitutional mess they've created as well.

But that would be a much harder case to get support for so you've got to play the cards you've got in your hand.
 
Cockney Mackem said:
Personally I think the whole icing a cake case is frivolous and stupid. What would be more appropriate would be for all the Christian groups to be forced to pay the legal fees of all the gay people they are campaigning against, pay damages for every homophobic offence committed in the region and libel costs for everything their representatives say to besmirch the reputation of gay people in the region. Probably charge them for the additional costs the UK government has to bear in sorting out the constitutional mess they've created as well.

But that would be a much harder case to get support for so you've got to play the cards you've got in your hand.
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As long as they don't break the law, what is wrong with people campaigning for what they believe in?
 
Harry Angstrom said:
their actions haven't caused loss or damage.
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Yeah they have. All the people who don't have equal marriage rights would have to incur legal costs to challenge it. Anyone who isn't clear on their legal rights to inherit, be regarded as next of kin or is at risk from the campaign of having disputed legal rights would be entirely reasonable to need to instinct a solicitor to assess their legal position and have to execute additional legal instruments. The rhetoric used by the church in Northern Ireland is discriminatory against homosexuality and homophobic hate crimes have been steadily rising. And there's also legal precedent to take historic loss and damage into account, which would open the doors to decades of loss, distress and even increased illness and death due to the refusal of rights to gay people.
 
Cockney Mackem said:
Yeah they have. All the people who don't have equal marriage rights would have to incur legal costs to challenge it. Anyone who isn't clear on their legal rights to inherit, be regarded as next of kin or is at risk from the campaign of having disputed legal rights would be entirely reasonable to need to instinct a solicitor to assess their legal position and have to execute additional legal instruments. The rhetoric used by the church in Northern Ireland is discriminatory against homosexuality and homophobic hate crimes have been steadily rising. And there's also legal precedent to take historic loss and damage into account, which would open the doors to decades of loss, distress and even increased illness and death due to the refusal of rights to gay people.
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It's the law in Northern Ireland. If people want to incur legal costs it should be against the Northern Ireland Government not christian lobbyists.
 
Cockney Mackem said:
All other things being equal I would agree with a ruling that refusing to endorse political movements you disagree with is NOT discrimination.

What is actually happening here though is that gay activists have targeted people who belong to, support and fund organisations who have actively prevented gay marriage being legal. So this is not a matter of the Christian bakers deserving to be left alone. If they had left gay people alone in the first place they would not be in the firing line. If Northern Ireland had not actively sought to undermine the UK's national law on discrimination there would not need to be a campaign to legalise gay marriage.
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What you seem to be saying is that they deserve everything they get because they'd been ***** in the past and anti-gay. You're effectively using their history and past behaviour in the current court case to justify why they should be punished - basically we know they're homophobes, so this was a homophobic act and they deserve it? Is that what you're syaing?
 
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