While in America a court has ruled that a business can refuse a message they disagree with, even if that message is pro-same sex marriage, cake bakers in Northern Ireland weren’t so lucky.
A county court in Northern Ireland, where same-sex marriage is not legal, declared that not wanting to make a cake with an explicit statement in favor of changing the law was illegal discrimination… cheared on by the Orwellian named “Equality Commission“.
The full ruling can be seen here, or read in its entirety below.
What follows is not a full fisking, but a simple pointing out of some of the nonsensical statements, assumptions, and outright prejudices of the court uttered by the presiding judge, Brownlie. The defendants made six claims in their defense:
- First and foremost, the defenents made six claims.
- The 2006 Regulations protect sexual orientation but do not protect sexual conduct.
- The Defendants did not have any knowledge and made no supposition of the sexual orientation of the Plaintiff.
- The Defendants would have supplied the cake to the Plaintiff absent the message promoting same-sex marriage and would have refused a heterosexual or bisexual customer who requested a cake with the same message.
- The order was refused because of the Defendants’ religious belief that it would be sinful for them to promote a definition of same – sex marriage.
- Discrimination must be against a person and not a political slogan or campaign.
- There is provision for reasonable accommodation.
None were actually refuted. The judge assumed and inferred by apparently magical powers, that the defendants were in their hearts a bunch of eeevil H8rz.
