Northern Ireland’s ‘Gay Cake’

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Northern Ireland’s ‘Gay Cake’

How a court ruling exposes the true aim of the global pro-homosexual movement

Northern Ireland is in an odd situation. Homosexual “marriage” is illegal there—unlike in the rest of the United Kingdom. However, refusing to support homosexual “marriage” is also, apparently, illegal.

Confused? You’re not the only one. Belfast’s county court has just released one of the most bizarre court rulings in a movement that has seen courts across the western world pushing a pro-homosexual agenda.

It is also yet another extension of the restrictions on free speech when it comes to what you can and cannot say about homosexuality.

The ruling revolves around a cake. Last May Gareth Lee, a pro-homosexual activist ordered a cake from Ashers Baking Co. in Belfast. The company had no problem taking an order for a cake from a homosexual man. But he later returned and asked them to put a picture on the cake, which included the slogan “Support Gay Marriage.”

Ashers baking politely returned the money and refused the order upon ascertaining it promoted homosexuality.
The owners of the bakery are Christian. The name of the bakery is a play on words from the Bible—Genesis 49:20 states “Bread from Asher shall be rich, And he shall yield royal dainties” (New King James Version). So Ashers Baking politely declined the order and returned the money. Lee said that this made him “feel like a second-class citizen” and took the bakery to court.

Enter Judge Isobel Brownlie. In places such as Northern Ireland, where the majority oppose homosexual “marriage,” it has often been left to the courts to advance the pro-homosexual cause. This is no exception. In her judgment on this case, Judge Brownlie goes well beyond what the law actually says. In fact, she all-but accuses Northern Ireland’s lawmakers of discrimination. In her formal conclusion to the case she writes that in her view, if someone refuses to provide a service because they disagree with same-sex unions, “then they were discriminating on grounds of sexual orientation.”

Remember, same-sex “marriage” is not legal in Northern Ireland, yet this judge is saying that if you refuse to do something because you disagree with homosexual “marriage,” then you’re breaking the law. By this logic, the Northern Ireland Assembly should also be dragged through the civil courts.

Judge Brownlie also builds on the judicial activism of others. She quotes heavily from earlier rulings that reek of Orwellian thought crime. Discrimination is all about “the working and thought process of the alleged discriminator,” reads one judgment. Another cautions that a person may “unconsciously be making his selections on the basis of race or sex. He may not realize he is doing so, but that is in fact what he was doing.” In other words, even thinking that homosexuality is wrong is discrimination, and even if you don’t consciously discriminate, the judge must dig deeper in search of unconscious bias. You may think that you’ve made a decision because the Bible tells you that two people of the same gender cannot get married—but it’s up to a judge to work out that it’s actually because you subconsciously hate all homosexuals.

Other parts of the judge’s logic are less sinister sounding, but more bizarre. Judge Brownlie concludes:

Much as I acknowledge fully their [the bakery owners’] religious belief is that gay marriage is sinful, they are in a business supplying services to all, however constituted. The law requires them to do just that, subject to the graphic being lawful and not contrary to the terms and conditions of the company.

That’s a major change in the law. As Dr. Norman Hamiliton of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland’s Council for Church in Society put it, “[I]n a deeply disturbing development, businesses will now be compelled to produce materials or messages, even if they are incompatible with their owners’ deeply and reasonably held beliefs.”

It’s hard to imagine this being applied consistently. Does this mean a Muslim baker must bake a cake saying “Jesus is the Son of God” if asked to do so? Would a Jewish printer be compelled to make posters saying the Holocaust never happened? Must a freelance writer produce work with which he vehemently or religiously disagrees? The “what-ifs” on this could go on and on.

The ruling contains so many of these half-baked extensions of the law, it’s hard to silence the thought that the judge decided on the ruling first, and then created the “logic” to support it later.

So many half-baked truths make it seem the judge decided on the ruling first, and then created the “logic” to support it later.
Nevertheless, the ruling is a milestone in a global push to restrict religious belief on homosexuality. Anti-discrimination laws have already seen people in many countries prosecuted or fined for criticizing homosexuality. Then that was extended to persecute anyone who refused to participate in homosexual “marriage” or adoption by homosexuals. This ruling exposes the thinking behind that persecution.

As Peter Lynas, Northern Ireland’s director of Evangelical Alliance and a former barrister, wrote on the Archbishop Cranmer blog, what is at stake here is the question “Can you force someone to express an opinion they disagree with?” Apparently the answer is yes.

In a press release for the Northern Ireland Evangelical Alliance, Lynas is quoted as saying:

This judgment will cause great concern for all those in business. It turns out, the customer is always right and businesses have no discretion in deciding which goods and services to produce. The law rightly protects people from discrimination, but it has now extended that protection to ideas.

This exposes the real reason a baker who refuses to bake a cake for a homosexual union or a florist who refuses to do their flowers is dragged through the courts. It’s not about equal rights or equal treatment.

Discrimination had nothing to do with the Ashers bakery case—the owners would have declined to make this cake no matter who asked for it, homosexual or heterosexual, male or female.

It is the belief that the pro-homosexuals want outlawed. The owners of Ashers bakery refused to endorse an idea. And the judge ruled that illegal, while laying the judicial groundwork clamp down on anyone deemed to have even “unconscious” thoughts of discrimination.

As Trumpet managing editor Joel Hilliker wrote last month:

Outspoken devotees of homosexuality want to penalize anyone who isn’t openly supportive. They would love a society where everyone wholeheartedly embraced homosexuality—but barring that, they want a Disneyland where everyone at least is forced to pretend to embrace it.In the world they are creating, if you don’t love homosexuality, you had better pretend you do, or the government will come after you.

This is now more clearly on display than ever before. To read about where this is leading the world, read our free book Redefining Family.