Friday, May 22, 2015

Gay baking

There's been a lot of fuss in the media recently after a Christian-owned bakery was found guilty of discrimination by refusing to make a cake with a message in support of gay marriage. It's generally been greeted as a good result but I'm not sure.

I am sometimes asked to make cakes. If someone asked me to make a cake for a rally demanding the legalisation of fox-hunting I'd say, 'I'm sorry; I don't agree with that. Would you mind asking someone else to make your cake?' I can't imagine that a reasonable person would have objected to that.

Now I realise I'm not in business professionally but, when the bakery refused, wouldn't the sensible thing have been for the customer to have said, 'Fine, I'll take my money elsewhere.'

I believe the customer in this case was an activist so I can't help thinking that this was, if not a set-up, then at least a situation that was profited from.

Incidentally if any of my gay friends asked me to make a wedding cake I would say, 'Are you sure? I'm not very good!' Then if they insisted I'd say, 'I'd be delighted and honoured.'

7 comments:

nick said...

The bakery didn't refuse initially, they agreed to make the cake and took his money, then backed out later. When they said they couldn't make the cake after all, he did in fact go to another bakery. It was the Equality Commission that wanted to take it to court to test Northern Irish equality laws.

Trubes said...

I too think it was a 'set up' case to test the equality laws.
What a waste of money, yet again, the only people who benefit are the lawyers...
Di xx

Liz Hinds said...

Oh I see, Nick. But did he approach the Equality Commission?

A lot of people are very happy though, Di.

Grannymar said...

If you take the money it is a contract! There was no mention anywhere of a cooling off period like some other companies do. It was at least a day later before minds were changed.

Whether it was a set up case or not, and I do not know either way, is not the point. Order taken and full money taken and not a deposit!

Ole Phat Stu said...

Gay cakes are different ; you put the icing BETWEEN the buns ;-)

nick said...

Liz: I'm not sure how the Equality Commission got involved. The reports I've read skip over that aspect.

Liz Hinds said...

It seems ages ago that i wrote this post. It's been a busy week or so but now I believe the bakers are appealing.