to have called my mother ignorant and uneducated?

[NomiMalone]

And have told her that her offensive views are not welcome in my home?

They only arrived this morning FFS.

Subject came up of the bakery in N.I. (where we're from) that refused to make a cake that had a pro-gay marriage slogan.

According to my mother the bakery were in the right. Being gay is a choice, most gay people are just saying they are for attention and it's completely unnatural.

WIBU to lose it with her?

There's no need to lose it with her. Why can't you discuss her views a bit and make her realise that her viewpoint is nonsensical and ignorant by your common sense and open-mindedness?

my mum is a 70yo Catholic and doesn't spout this kind of bollocks. In actual fact I have no idea what her views are on this but given her views on other things I would be astonished if she thought anything like this.

Using age to explain away this kind of crap is bollocks. Either you're an ignorant bigot or you're not.

79 yo, that should be. Goodness, how ancient we all are.

I'm sick to the back teeth of age being used an excuse for bigotry. I know plenty of tolerant and open minded people in their 70s and 80s.

Why should someone get a free pass on being a bigot just because they're a mother?

Because in another 20/30 years you might find yourself in her position being insulted by your own children for god knows what. Or are you all perfect now and promise us to to always stay perfect and progressive and change accordingly to be up to date with times?

Christ, if I've brought my kids up correctly I certainly hope they do challenge me if I turn into a conservative fart with bigoted views!

Challenge and insult are two different things, Mitzy

are you all perfect now and promise us to to always stay perfect and progressive and change accordingly to be up to date with times?

Obviously one can't promise anything. I personally hope, though, that I can continue to be 'progressive', if that's what we're calling 'unbigoted' now. And I'd also hope that people around me would challenge any bigoted statements I made.

I also hope that if I ever come out with any ignorant bigotry like this DD calls me out on it!

I hope to fuck my children will challenge me if I somehow turn into a bigoted asshole. If they dont, Im failing in my job right now!

Since when does one need to be perfect and progressive to just not be an intolerant arse? And its not about being up to date with change, thats just a lazy excuse.

I think if you can't have a free and frank exchange of views (including the occasional insult) with your own mother, when can you? I'd like to think my boys could pull me up on anything they strongly disagreed with and that I would be open to changing my views if they made a good argument. But then, I am a whole three years younger than the OP's mother. Maybe in a year or two's time I'll suddenly... turn

"It's important to remember that our parents are the product of their generation and invironment (as we all are) and as the years pass people become less flexible and less likely to change their views so we need to be a bit more tolerant towards them"

Which generation was it you had in mind? The generation brought up in that famously bigoted and puritanical decade known as "the 60s"?

Or the decade which launched women's lib and gay rights, the 70s?

YABU.

Your mother is correct although possibly not for the reasons she is clumsily expressing. The bakery had every right to refuse to produce a product expressing views they disagree with. This was not an act of discrimination - they did not refuse to make the cake because the customer was gay, it was the message they were being asked to write that they disagreed with. Freedom of conscience is a fundamental principle that should be defended and I am astonished at the verdict in this case.

I'm sure we all have the imagination to think of a reverse situation - e.g. a gay baker asked to produce anti-gay cake, a Muslim baker asked to produce an EDL cake etc etc. Any number of instances where I'm sure those on this thread would suddenly decide that the moral high ground lay elsewhere.

OP you have freedom of conscience to disagree with your mother, but your abuse of her opinion has tipped you over into that thing you purport to despise - intolerance and bigotry.

More of that tired auld shitnugget "Being against intolerance makes you just as bad, you bigot".
No. You're hard of thinking. That isn't how it works. And you fucking well know it.

And also, she's not right, and the bakery didn't have every right to refuse. The law just told you so. They had no right to refuse.

If you're drawing comparisons between the EDL and someone celebrating a gay marriage you have problems.

At 72 my mum is definitely starting to get grumpier!! But she still accepts people for who they are and is voting yes in today's marriage equality referendum.

'Plank' is another great Irish insult - 'ya plank ya' :)

scatter, they are not comparable. I'm assuming that by an 'anti-gay cake' you mean a cake iced with 'Death to the gays' or whatever. A cake that says 'Support gay marriage' is fairly obviously not expressing the same sentiment; the latter is freedom of speech and the former would be classed as hate speech.

Perhaps a better comparison would be a baker who was passionately involved with the gay rights movement being asked to make a cake saying "oppose gay marriage". I think if they had refused to bake the cake everyone would all have been applauding them.

This isn't about the cake - that was the issue that raised the discussion. It's about the bigoted view that being gay is a lifestyle choice that people make to draw attention to themselves.

That absolutely deserves to be called out, and the OP did the right thing in so doing.

Older people can change their mind - my dad was very homophobic until he realised the hypocrisy of his position as he had come to accept that his step-granddaughter is gay, his daughter is bi, and he was being a bit of a prat by being freaked out by gay men but not gay/bi women.

I'm sure we all have the imagination to think of a reverse situation - e.g. a gay baker asked to produce anti-gay cake, a Muslim baker asked to produce an EDL cake etc etc. Any number of instances where I'm sure those on this thread would suddenly decide that the moral high ground lay elsewhere.

But supporting the EDL isn't a protected characteristic. There is a crucial legal distinction.

I miss my dad. Not the intolerant bigotted old git that died, but the kind and open-minded man he was when I was a child. Faux news has a lot to answer for.

i eekp hoping my mother will recover from the years of watching it, but so far, no. i have spoken quite sharply to her, but usually in terms of the specific situation. At her recent visit I had to point out late term abortions are a rare medical necessity, not a choice a woman just didnt get around to making until going through the hassle of most of a pregnancy! (She is an American Catholic even before the Faux News brainwashing.)

icimoi

no pub can refuse to serve customers for reasons that are based on discrimination against people on the grounds of race, gender, sexuality

The cake case was a bit different to how it's been reported, though.

The court found for the complainant on the grounds that the reason given (the slogan) was not the shop's real, or at least only, objection. The complainant was gay, and the court found they had been discriminated against on that basis.

It does rather open up two questions: surely the complainant is not the first gay customer to have asked for a cake, and they were presumably served, and there is no particular reason why a heterosexual customer couldn't have asked for the same cake.

Had they done so, and been refused, the case would have, so far as one can tell, decided in the shop's favour.

So as things stand, if someone who is straight goes into an Irish cake shop, orders a cake with a pro-gay slogan, and is refused, the precedent is that that's OK. The court didn't find that shops have to service all requests, but that they cannot discriminate against customers.

I'm a bit about the argument that refusing to bake cakes with slogans about gay marriage is discrimination if the customer is gay, but OK if they aren't, and it seems to be at the bleeding edge of the concept of "indirect discrimination". You can erect endless adjacent hypothetical cases (for example, if a heterosexual man went into the shop and ordered a surprise engagement party cake for a lesbian couple contemplating marriage and were refused, does this case act as a precedent?), and I think the case is rather unsatisfactory from that point of view.

The "Muslim baker! Cake of Mohammed! OMG!" nonsense also seems not to be decided, because if a non-Muslim were to order such a cake from a Muslim baker, the refusal wouldn't engage a protected characteristic of the customer.

Freedom of speech doesn't mean being able to get people to print your pamphlets, it just means the government doesn't seize them. The CPGB and their ilk historically ran their own printshops, because no-one else would prin the Morning Star, and that was fine. This case seems to muddy the waters without really making it clear who's being helped. Cake shops can't turn away gay customers for being gay. Yes, we weren't in the court and didn't see the demeanour of the witnesses or hear their testimony, but is that really what happened?

This was not an act of discrimination - they did not refuse to make the cake because the customer was gay, it was the message they were being asked to write that they disagreed with.

As I wrote above, in fact the court found precisely what you say they didn't: the court found that the bakers had discriminated against the customer because of who they were, and that the slogan was secondary (at most).

So all the various "does that mean that I can't get a cake with the slogan...?" cases are moot, because the court didn't decide that issue. They decided that the cake shop discriminated against the prospective customer because of their protected characteristic.

Setting up a slightly more plausible hypothetical: suppose a black evangelical who was a member of a baptist church with eye-watering views on homosexuality went to a bakers' shop and ordered a cake (why are all these cases about cake?) with the slogan "ban gay marriage now!" and were refused, this precedent could be argued to claim that it was discrimination against black (protected characteristic) evangelicals (protected characteristic), as banning gay marriage is in some sense connected with being black and evangelical, at least as much a favouring gay marriage is connected to being gay. But if a white, middle class, heterosexual, able bodied, atheist with a touch of cultural Christianity, young, Hoxton Hipster went in and ordered the same cake and were turned away, they would be straight out of luck.

To be clear, I think the bakery were dicks, although I have a dark suspicion that the customers were if not stirring, at least happy for the fight once it kicked off. But I think this judgement is deeply unsatisfactory, because by engaging the protected characteristics of the prospective customer it substantially muddies the water. Suppose a gay baker whose main market is cakes for same sex marriages refused to make a cake saying "down with this sort of thing gay marriage" ordered by a gay man opposed to same sex marriage? No protected characteristic is obviously engaged, after all.

The court found for the complainant on the grounds that the reason given (the slogan) was not the shop's real, or at least only, objection. The complainant was gay, and the court found they had been discriminated against on that basis.

Not quite. What they said was the Defendants knew or perceive that the claimant was gay and/or associated with others who are gay. The judge found that the bakers cancelled the order as they oppose same sex marriage because they regard it as sinful and contrary to their religious beliefs. As they were conducting a business for profit they had to comply with the law notwithstanding their personal religious views.