I suppose the Ashers Bakery debacle has exposed something.It has shown that there are many out there who do not actually understand the law; why it is actually needed in this form and the very idea of what “equality” actually means and is. This case has finally laid it on the line .
The First Minister Peter Robinson also needs to search his own mind and ask himself how he squares his declaration that the Equality Commission was “bonkers” for fighting this case , when the law has come down on the opposite side of the argument . That simply means he was entirely wrong in his judgement. Far from this being an attack on anyone ‘s rights or religion , it has proven to protect every citizen from the more outre versions of some of these religious and possibly political beliefs. There is is some very tunnelled -visioned thinking going on here. Equality is above religion and politics .That’s the way it has to be otherwise the very concept would be open to abuse.As it was in this case.
There was no problem with this family business in any other way . It baked good enough cakes but it discriminated against certain individuals for religious reasons.They were apparently gracious enough in their discrimination. In other words , if you are stout of heart, believe in a god and discriminate with a smile on your lips, that should be perfectly fine . It wasn’t.
Equality is also for those who do not believe in god . It is not a special club for a variety of faiths and beliefs.Faiths and beliefs are personal dreams and hopes outside of secular society and that is as it should be.
By the sound of the young man from the bakery , interviewed outside the courtroom after the final decision , he has has learned nothing from his experience in court .Apparently he has no idea that he has done anything wrong. I’m sure the whole equality concept was laboriously explained to him in great detail during this case and he would have been privy to some expert counselling and education …and yet, he didn’t understand even a tiny little bit of it.That’s like a child not knowing any better , reaching the age of reason and using it as a defence. Either you learn by your mistakes or you continue to keep on making those same mistakes. If you keep making them , then it is possible you are not making a mistake at all but are actually flaunting the law which you know full well. There is very little morality in that. That is simple blind belief or crookedness.
There is emotive talk of this case being a divisive one in our society.Well, think about that one .The division is between those who want fairness across the board and those who wish to be “outlaws”..beyond the law and …”special cases”. Well , we could each one of us , make a special case for ourselves, depending on how imaginitive, we each, are.
It would be the case that there’d be special clauses for each one of us and laws would be unworkable. .It should finally teach those who have not yet realised the simple fact that equlity means just that . Everyone is entitled to the same treatment within the law , no matter their personal, political, or religious preferences.
If that was the case people would be on the streets demanding the closure of businesses who did not comply with every little “special” regulation put in place .There is barely a day that goes by that doesn’t see some business closing its doors for flaunting health and safety laws or not having the financial wherewithal to upgrade their standards in compliance. My uncle ran a bakery and had to constantly upgrade until steel covered the walls.It was one of the factors that finally made him throw in the towel and close shop.He would have sold his pastries to anyone no matter their preference.
All the Ashers have to do is to discontinue the particular slogan -decorating service if they feel that they cannot comply with its outworkings, but they may have a preference to tilt at the windmill of the law instead and some very anti-equality political bed-fellows on the far-right could well be already pushing them up that Deadend Street.People will go to other businesses whose religious beliefs do not impinge on the civic law.Obviously , this case has been such a high -profile affair that they will gain many supporters but it will also drive away liberal-minded people in their droves. In that sense there will be division , for sure, especially if there is a competing bakery which can bake cakes of similar quality and without the additional nonsense. .
Why should the Ashers Bakery or any other business be treated any differently? It is they who are at fault and not the law , if they could only open their eyes to see that simple fact.
Some people are obtuse and some people pretend to be obtuse. Had a normal customer come into the bakery and asked for that slogan, they would have been refused. The customer was not discriminated against _ his choice of slogan was. You could opine that the bakery was set up in much the same way as a manual labourer applying for a council job used to be asked twice to swear an oath to Elizabeth Regina knowing that a principled petson would refuse.
From point 41 in the judgment the argument that it was anti-slogan rather than anti-gay is discussed and dismissed. You can read it here:
https://www.courtsni.gov.uk/en-GB/Judicial%20Decisions/PublishedByYear/Documents/2015/%5B2015%5D%20NICty%202/j_j_2015NICty2Final.htm
On you point that “Had a normal customer come into the bakery and asked for that slogan, they would have been refused”. The judge says:
[42] In applying the reasoning from the authorities cited, it is my view that, if a comparator is required, the correct comparator is a heterosexual person placing an order for a cake with the graphics either “Support Marriage” or “Support Heterosexual Marriage.”
What is required is proof of a factual matrix of less favourable treatment on the ground of sexual orientation and not the motive. I regard the criterion to be “support for same sex marriage” which is indissociable from sexual orientation. There is also an exact correspondence between the advantage conferred and the disadvantage imposed in supporting one and not the other.
You hit the nail on the head , Fiosrach, when you said…”Had a normal customer come into the …” …You mightn’t have meant to but you did all the same . You see the whole deal is about treating everyone as “normal” persons.That is exactly the core of the equality deal. To treat everyone as a “normal” person .By your statement you actually betrayed yourself and your belief that my neighbour is not a “normal” person and neither is my nephew who has been a homosexual since birth. Even though they are now both hard-working , handsome upstanding citizens , paying their taxes helping their communities and all the rest.
This stuff has to nailed down. It amounts to misguide bigotry…I have no idea what your personal peccadilloes are,fiosrach, but they mightn’t necessarily be the same as the fellow living across the road from you and it shouldn’t make one bit of difference to you anyway.
Paddy, don’t confuse “normal” with “equal”. It is normal to have 4 fingers and a thumb. People with 3 fingers are not normal but may be equal. I am well aware of the spectrum having alpha males at one end and uber females at the other and all the variations in between. My peccadilloes are irrelevant unless you consider homosexuality (from birth?) to be a sin.
I think you are confusing yourself fiosrach….you actually said…
” Had a normal customer come into the bakery and asked for that slogan, they would have been refused. ”
…I was simply asking you what you thought a “normal” customer was as opposed to say…..an “abnormal” one?…It’s like that other one …”the man in the street”….whatever the hell that “man in the street ” is supposed to be be .There’s me thinking that each one of them was a unique creature with his own opinions and ideas.
Yes and I did actually say that your peccadilloes…just like everyone else’s should be irrelevant…and i meant it in the context of of each of our lives , unless there was something criminal involved…including someone baking a cake or fixing a bicycle. I know exactly what “equal” means . I think I made that very clear in the entire written blog above ..
I don’t shove my Catholicism down anyone’s throat, because it’s my personal belief.
However if I refuse to embrace homosexuality I’m considered a hater, and I know I’m not that.
The problem is, refusing to embrace homosexuality has become a 21-century hate crime!
So I would like to know who is instilling their will and beliefs on whom?
Jim
No-one is asking you to embrace anyone or anything.
You are not being asked to approve of homosexuality. Just to support a society where everyone is treated equally.
Now you might say Ashers would have treated any customer asking for that slogan in the same way and personally I think that is a strong point, but the Judge disagreed, and I admit I have not read the full judgement.
It’s all just people trying to live their lives. Nothing to be scared of.
We’ve been hearing a lot from Christians who’ve sided with the bakery on this for months now that their deeply held religious beliefs are under threat and that the state is now hostile to Christians and that they are being forced to relinquishing these deeply held beliefs in the face of an aggressive gay lobby.
Exactly how ‘deeply held’ and ‘strong’ are these Christian beliefs when such a basic request, to bake a cake with a jocular message with Sesame street characters about gay marriage, is a threat to your beliefs? If your beliefs are strongly held then why would baking a little cake with a funny message be such a threat??
Is the problem here that the bakery owners and many of their supporters have weakly held beliefs? that they are very very insecure in their Christian beliefs ?? their beliefs must be somewhat superficially held if they think baking a wee cake with sesame street characters is a major compromise for them ?
No compromise was needed. The judge suggested that they could have got one of their non-Christian staff to bake the cake or sub-contract it out.
Literally they could have had their cake and ate it!
So people are only now waking up to the fact that the DUP and their supporters are a bunch of religious zealots and bigots, the Catholic nationalist/republican community have known and experienced this first hand for decades, they haven’t changed one iota and won’t, bigots never do, christ they make ukip look like half decent human beings and not the bunch of zenaphobic old bigots that they are.
Females have two of the same kind of sex chromosome (XX), and are called the homogametic sex.
Males have two distinct sex chromosomes (XY), and are called the heterogametic sex.
So where does homosexuals fid into this ‘normal’ and natural scheme of things?
There is no such thing as a born homosexual.
Unless science can come up with a third set of chromosomes homosexuality is a life choice, and not a distinct and separate gender.
On the genetics, there are variations on XX and XY such as XXY so there is no natural binary duality.
“There is no such thing as a born homosexual.
Unless science can come up with a third set of chromosomes homosexuality is a life choice, and not a distinct and separate gender”.
What difference does it make if homosexuality is a life choice rather than an inherent trait to a person? They still are.
Well …it mightn’t be as simplistic as that.Just as there are many holes in our understanding of the universe and even of nature , we gradually accrue more knowledge as time goes by.Scientists are still studying the relationship between biology and sexual orientation. There has been no definitive conclusion by anyone as yet.In fact there are conflicts and confusions aplenty.It appears to be a case of a combination of genetic and hormonal factors. Certainly there may be a social factor too.Certain biological interplays of genetic material in the womb may have some bearing on heterosexual, homosexual,bisexual or even asexual eventual orientation. They are not factors that the person would have much control over. There is also evidence that brain structure , genes and pre- natal hormones have a part to play. You can get some idea why some people even feel the need to change their sex. They feel that they have been born as the “wrong” sex. They don’t actually feel comfortable in their own skin. Now we may argue that this is a problem to do with their mental health but they still feel the need to change their sex..Homosexuals generally do not feel like this but accept their lot that their sexual inclination attracts them to males who feel like themselves or females who feel like they do.
Chromosomes define gender not sexuality. In what biology or science document does it say you must have a certain DNA coding to be of a certain sexual orientation?