A Christian Baker Must Make a Cake in Support of Gay Marriage, Say Judges in Northern Ireland

In Northern Ireland, a small bakery lost an appeal after it refused to bake a cake in support of same-sex marriage. Today’s ruling confirmed the initial court decision, which held that the bakery had discriminated against a prospective customer on the basis of his sexual orientation. The bakery’s owners, the members of the McArthur family, are Christian, and same-sex marriage conflicts with their religious belief that marriage is a union of one man and one woman. The initial ruling, delivered in 2015, held that Ashers Baking Company had directly discriminated against Gareth Lee, who ordered the cake, which would have featured the Sesame Street characters Bert and Ernie and the phrase “support same-sex marriage.”

Daniel McArthur, the bakery’s general manager, insists that the bakery did not discriminate against Lee personally. “This has never been about the customer,” he said this morning. “It has always been about a message promoting a cause that contradicts the clear teaching of the Bible on marriage — a message promoting a cause with which I and my family fundamentally disagree.”

The judges rejected the appeal, asserting that, in simply agreeing to make the cake, the bakery would not necessarily have to support the message on it. “The fact that a baker provides a cake for a particular team or portrays witches on a Halloween cake does not indicate any support for either,” they wrote. The judges noted that the bakery would have agreed to make a cake in support of marriage, apparently implying that its willingness to do so was evidence that its refusal to make the same-sex-marriage cake was discrimination based on Lee’s sexual orientation.

“The freedom to express a religious or political opinion has to be balanced in a mature society with law to protect those who are most vulnerable,” said Michael Wardlow, chief commissioner of the Equality Commission, which helped Lee bring his case against the bakery.

But McArthur disagrees with this understanding. “If equality law means people can be punished for politely refusing to support other people’s causes, then equality law needs to change,” he said.

Simon Calvert of the Christian Institute, which helped the McArthurs in their legal battle, also maintains that the refusal to bake the cake was not related to Lee as an individual or his sexual orientation. “The only reason Ashers Baking Company turned this order down is because to do otherwise would be to involve themselves and their company in endorsing a highly political and controversial campaign to redefine marriage,” he said in a statement.

#related#Meanwhile, an assembly member, Paul Givan of the Democratic Unionist Party, has drafted a private members’ bill that would add a conscience clause to Northern Ireland’s existing equality law, allowing businesses to opt out of services that violate their religious convictions. “The dilemma facing people of faith is the choice of violating their sincerely held beliefs or going out of business,” Givan said.

This conflict between religious freedom and LGBT citizens in Northern Ireland resembles the ongoing tension in the U.S. over the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act and similar religious-freedom laws in several states.