To ask you what you think about the Christian bakery?

[Summerbreezer]

Can't see a thread about this on here - apologies if there is one already.

For those who haven't read the story, a bakery in Northern Ireland has refused to bake a cake for a gay person. They wanted Bert and Ernie on the top of the cake with the words "Queerspace".

BBC Link here:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-28206581

I am completely torn here. On one hand, I am a big believer in "trendy" rights not trumping "untrendy" ones. The rights of Christians are just as important as the rights of gay people.

I am also a big believer in the freedom of private business to contract with whoever they wished.

But then, if this bakery had refused to serve a black person on the grounds of race, I would feel deeply uncomfortable about it.

So Mumsnet, tell me what you think!

[BackOnlyBriefly]

Freedom of choice! exactly!

That's why it's okay to refuse to take a Jew to a synagogue in your taxi cab if you are an atheist. You can't be required to do anything to promote Judaism and helping them get there would.

On the same basis if you're a postman you can refuse to post letters to the local Mosque.

You don't have to deliver heating oil to a Christian church either.

I wish the haters could see themselves from the outside and understand what they look and sound like.

If they had their way we wouldn't have a society at all. I do think one day people will say "surely they didn't really act like that in the olden days?" and like one poster further back they may deny it ever happened.

"Come on!" they'll say. "No sane and decent person would refuse to sell a cake for such a daft reason. You're having me on".

[SuburbanRhonda]

"Come on!" they'll say. "No sane and decent person would refuse to sell a cake for such a daft reason. You're having me on".

Until you say, "No, but it was a Christian bakery", then they'll say, "Oh, right of course, I remember them. Bloody bonkers, weren't they?"