'Gay cake' bakery discriminated against client over sexual orientation, court told
Source: theguardian.com
David Scoffield QC, acting for the bakery, said if Lee’s argument was right, a Muslim printer could not turn down a contract to print leaflets about the prophet Muhammad, an atheist could not turn down an order saying God made the world and a Roman Catholic printer could not decline making leaflets calling for the legalisation of abortion on demand.
Judge says case is not straightforward, reserving judgment in third day of trial at Northern Ireland high court.
The Evangelical Christian owners of a bakery that refused to make a gay-themed cake discriminated against a client on grounds of his sexual orientation, Northern Ireland’s high court has heard.
A lawyer for an LGBT activist suing the bakery, Ashers, said that “but for the word gay this order would have been fulfilled”. Robin Allen QC also told Belfast high court on Monday: “This case is direct discrimination.”
Former Ashers customer Gareth Lee sued the bakery after it reversed an agreement to bake a cake with a pro-gay marriage message. The bakery initially accepted the order but 48 hours later handed back the payment to Lee, who had asked for a cake featuring the Sesame Street puppets Bert and Ernie.
Lee had ordered it to mark last year’s election of the first openly gay mayor in Northern Ireland as well as to coincide with International Day against Homophobia last May.
Allen said it should have been obvious to Ashers that the person making the request for an iced pro-gay marriage slogan was gay himself.
“If you take the factual analysis, shorn of any meaning, it is the word gay in the phrase that was the cause of the differential treatment,” the lawyer said. “It is clear that if the word gay had been replaced by the word heterosexual, the order would have been accepted.”
Allen also defended the equality commission of Northern Ireland’s decision to fund Lee’s case, arguing it had no other choice under the law.
But in his summary, David Scoffield QC, acting for the bakery, said if Lee’s argument was right, a Muslim printer could not turn down a contract to print leaflets about the prophet Muhammad, an atheist could not turn down an order saying God made the world and a Roman Catholic printer could not decline making leaflets calling for the legalisation of abortion on demand.
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Ashers’ lawyer said to force any of these individuals or his client to do this would infringe Article 9 (freedom of religion) of the Human Rights Act. “When someone is being forced to promote a cause with which they don’t agree, [it] is taking it a step too far,” Scoffield said.
District judge Isobel Brownlie told the court on the third day of the case that she wanted to give full consideration to the evidence: “It is not a straightforward area of the law. Obviously, this is a case in which I propose to reserve my judgment.”
The case is a legally groundbreaking clash between Christian conscience and equality rights for the LGBT community in Northern Ireland, with Ashers now a global cause for Evangelical Christians across the world.
Ashers is named after one of the 12 sons of the biblical patriarch Jacob who “would provide delicacies fit for a king”. The firm, owned by the McArthur family, employs 80 people and sells its products across the UK and Ireland.
Source: theguardian.com
