same sex marridge cake

They should not be allowed to refuse that service based on someone’s sexuality, religion or ethnicity.

Do you think it would be okay for a golf club to refuse to accept black people as members?

they refuse females as members

Religion. Still poisoning everything. 🙄

As far as I can see he’s not refused to serve the person he’s refused to make a design that he disagrees with. It’d be discrimination if he refused to bake the person a cake full stop or would make the design for a straight customer.
It looks like in this case you’ve of the whole bell as there’s 2 bell ends though.

They should not be allowed to refuse that service based on someone’s sexuality, religion or ethnicity.

They didn’t. The refused to make a cake for a cause they don’t believe in. A straight person could of asked for the same cake and they would of had the same result.

they refuse females as members

And if someone challenged that then I’d support them too.

Some people don’t like homosexuals, you mean the thought of homosexuality? Right? I mean how would you tell otherwise?

No, I mean some people don’t like homosexuals. I’ve no idea why they don’t like them, nor do I care. What they think is up to them and I’m too indifferent in this particular topic to try to persuade them either way. What I don’t understand is why a lot of people seem to think it’s OK to tell them what they should and shouldn’t like.

What about the bakers rights, should they be forced to do something against there beliefs to conform to society.

Yes.

How boring would that’ve been? Cake made. No news. No thread. Nothing. 🙁

some people don’t like homosexuals… What I don’t understand is why a lot of people seem to think it’s OK to tell them what they should and shouldn’t like.

What homophobes choose to do in the privacy of their own homes is their business, but I don’t want my kids seeing it.

They should not be allowed to refuse that service based on someone’s sexuality, religion or ethnicity.

So the Halal butcher should sell me bacon if I asked him, or should I go to another butcher?

What homophobes choose to do in the privacy of their own homes is their business, but I don’t want my kids seeing it.

😆

Uch, the ‘labels’ are so tiring. I cannot wait for the day then we don’t have to have a big ****-off label slapped on our foreheads. I’m almost feel that all the ‘gay rights/pride’ stuff encourages the labeling even further.

/end of pointless rant.

So the Halal butcher should sell me bacon if I asked him, or should I go to another butcher?

If he sells bacon to other people, then yes he should sell it to you.

I assume what they object to is baking a cake that promotes homosexuality, not baking a cake for a homosexual?

Are people still allowed to hold the view that homosexuality is wrong? If so, are they then entitled to decline to make something that promotes a view that opposes theirs?

Would it be unlawful or wrong for a gay baker to refuse to bake a cake with the Christian Institute logo on it for a Christian Institute party, ordered by a heterosexual customer, because it promoted something they didn’t agree with?

So the Halal butcher should sell me bacon if I asked him, or should I go to another butcher?

The butcher should sell you something they don’t stock? Not quite the same as a cake shop refusing to sell a cake, is it?

But the halal butcher doesn’t serve bacon, if you were guy and he sold bacon to other customers but not you then that’s discrimination. Going into a halal butchers and ordering bacon is harassment, similar to going into a Christian bakery and ordering a design that offends their beliefs. Good grief I can’t believe I’m defending the god botherers.

He did them a favour. I wish my baker would stop selling me delicious cakes and biscuits. The bastard.

GrahamS – Member
So the Halal butcher should sell me bacon if I asked him, or should I go to another butcher?
If he sells bacon to other people, then yes he should sell it to you.

So in this instance the baker is in the right as he would have refused a homosexually themed cake to anyone? 😕

Having read through all the above I’m can’t figure out who’s arguing what any more.

EDIT: I have no view of my own as it’s bound to be wrong!

Going into a halal butchers and ordering bacon is harassment, similar to going into a Christian bakery and ordering a design that offends their beliefs contradicts the bits of the bible they’ve cherry-picked to support their prejudices.

?

ransos – Member
So the Halal butcher should sell me bacon if I asked him, or should I go to another butcher?
The butcher should sell you something they don’t stock? Not quite the same as a cake shop refusing to sell a cake, is it?

Depends, bacon is a type of meat and a Halal butcher sells meat. (A massive over simplification of your cake categorising analogy)

I walked into a butchers in town who (unbeknownst to me only specialised in pork products), I asked if he had any whole chickens or joints of beef – needless to say I didn’t get what I was after.

The butcher should sell you something they don’t stock? Not quite the same as a cake shop refusing to sell a cake, is it?

I’m sure the cake shop would have sold them a cake, they just didn’t want to make them one (or choose to stock one) to that specific design. A halal butcher chooses not to stock bacon.

Going into a halal butchers and ordering bacon is harassment, similar to going into a Christian bakery and ordering a design that offends their beliefs.

Hmm.. that’s a fair point. 😕

I don’t think either qualifies as harassment though, unless they do it repeatedly.

And the cake situation was done to highlight possibly illegal discrimination, not just piss off the shop owners.

Are people still allowed to hold the view that homosexuality is wrong? If so, are they then entitled to decline to make something that promotes a view that opposes theirs?

Imagine that the bakers were racists who were opposed to anti-racism campaigns, and they’d refused to make a cake that was commissioned for ‘Show Racism the Red Card’, on the grounds of not wanting racial harmony and thinking that black people were a bit ewww.

They’re allowed to hold those views, they’ll just get into trouble if they start actively discriminating because of those views.

Give us a few more days and we’ll have better stories making the headlines 😆

The butcher should sell you something they don’t stock? Not quite the same as a cake shop refusing to sell a cake, is it?

But they didn’t refuse to sell them a cake – they refused to make them a cake with the name of a campaign group on it. That really isn’t the same thing.

It’s illegal to discriminate against a person for their sexuality, gender or race but I don’t think the same goes for ‘discriminating’ against a campaign group.

I’m sure I would be (rightly) in trouble for not employing someone because of their religious beliefs but I would I really get into trouble for refusing to do work for Concern (Christian rights group)?

The bakers weren’t refusing to bake a cake for a gay person, were they? They were refusing to decorate a cake in a manner that goes against their beliefs…
If the gay bloke had gone into the bakers asking for a cake that said “Happy Diwali” or “Good Luck Bob” there wouldn’t have been an issue.

Does the baker really have to accept the job?

It would be a lot better if bigoted business people had some sort of directory they could advertise in that we could all see. Then if I wanted a cake made I could see the above bakery was a bigot and then never buy their goods.

Give it ten years and this will all have blown over and 99% of people will wonder what in the hell it was all about.

I do get confused, however. The god squad brigade *really* have several nests of bees in their bonnet about gay folk to the apparent exclusion of all other things in their book.

But they didn’t refuse to sell them a cake – they refused to make them a cake with the name of a campaign group on it. That really isn’t the same thing.

The bakers weren’t refusing to bake a cake for a gay person, were they? They were refusing to decorate a cake in a manner that goes against their beliefs…

No: the bakers said “It certainly was at odds with what the Bible teaches”

Maybe, but it made headlines and got all of us talking about it – so I’d say job done really.

I believe the opposite, just looking at this thread there are in my view far more people seeing or having sympathy the baker’s point of view than there were on say the Church vs gay marriage threads. This illustrates how artificial constructs can be counterproductive.

After all, Rosa Parks did not get on that bus with the intention to protest, but when asked to move, she refused because she had had enough – it was a spontaneous act of defiance and all the more powerful as a result.

ransoms – I’m not seeing how what they said contradicts the two posts you quoted?

And bear in mind, they’ve said it’s time to “make a stand”. (Fully backed up by the Christian Institute who will no doubt fund their legal costs should it go to court…they like spending their money fighting against LGBT rights, and getting siblings added to the list of people who should be allowed have civil partnerships. 🙄 )

They’re allowed to hold those views, they’ll just get into trouble if they start actively discriminating because of those views.

So would it be ok it be ok for a gay baker to refuse to bake a cake with the Christian Institute logo on it for a Christian Institute party?

No: the bakers said “It certainly was at odds with what the Bible teaches”

I do agree, rereading, that that it could be construed that way – i.e. its a cake for a gay wedding so we turned it down because of that. However, I think there is plenty of wriggle room for the baker that his comments refer specifically to campaign agenda of the group the logo of which the couple wanted on the cake.

Which every way you cut it (pun intended) you do wonder how deliberately the baker was targeted and how deliberately inflammatory the cake design was. If it had been a far more anonymous cake I wonder if the baker would have had any issue.

Who puts the logo of a campaign group on their wedding cake ffs! It would be like me having the greenpeace logo on my birthday cake!

ransoms – I’m not seeing how what they said contradicts the two posts you quoted?

Their justification appears to be a literal interpretation of the bible. Given that the bible (to be the best of my knowledge) has nothing to say about Sesame street or Queerspace, then their refusal can only be the bible’s condemnation of sodomy.

If they had any guts, they should at least be consistent and refuse commissions for farmers, bankers and menstruating women.

Which every way you cut it (pun intended) you do wonder how deliberately the baker was targeted and how deliberately inflammatory the cake design was.

They may well have been. Good.

Ok, I see what you’re getting at now. Perhaps a separate issue though (an interesting one mind).

ransos – Member

No: the bakers said “It certainly was at odds with what the Bible teaches”

That’s what I said- their beliefs didn’t prevent them from baking the cake; they chose to discriminate against gay people based on their beliefs. But there’s nothing in the bible that prevented them from baking the cake.

Who puts the logo of a campaign group on their wedding cake ffs!

It’s not a wedding cake.

It was a cake requested by a gay rights activist, specifically to start this debate and legal challenge.

Do we know if any of the bakers were clean shaven?

I agree with many on here, in that I strongly disagree with the baker’s views, but I do think that they should not be forced to make things that contradict their beliefs. There is a big difference (in my mind, and probably in law) between saying “I will not sell you this here cake, because you are gay and I don’t like gay people”, and saying “We don’t make / sell cakes like that”. I think it’s pretty much certain that if a straight person asked for the same design then they too would have been refused.

If I were a baker and someone asked me to bake a cake that said “gay people are really rubbish”, then I would decline. In doing so, I wouldn’t be discriminating against gay-haters, so much as saying “these are my hands, and just because I sell cakes, that doesn’t mean that you can force me to do whatever you like with my hands”. Clearly the historical context is different so it’s not a perfect analogy, but still. In a similar vein, if you went to that baker and said “I am a Jew. Please make me a cake that says ‘Judaism is best, and Jesus was not the son of God’.”, would you really think that the baker would be anti-Semitic if he declined?

The only real difference (to my mind) is that the baker’s anti-homosexuality beliefs are at odds with mine. I think he’s 100% definitely blindingly obviously wrong to think that being gay is wrong. But I do still think that he’s allowed to *think* that.

Oh and on the subject of clubs discriminating against women etc., hopefully the very idea of having to force them to be inclusive will be daft before too long. What *should* be done is that the right-minded majority would shun anywhere that was discriminating like that, so they’d disappear. In much the same way as I’m fairly sure (naively hope..) that any golf club which put forward a “no black people” policy would be forced to change its stance by its members refusing to remain.