‘Gay Cake’ case now going back to court

[FeminismandWomensFights]

This case is an important one to watch for those interested legal protections for personal freedom of belief. It is now going back to court.
Gist seems to be that the complainant tried to order a cake with a message on it saying ‘support gay marriage’ from a baker who doesn’t support gay marriage. Bakery says no to that specific order.
Complainant feels it’s about discrimination because he couldn’t make that supplier supply him with that specific message on a cake. Baker says that any different message on a cake would’ve been completely fine to provide to him, it’s not personal discrimination, it’s about people having a right not to endorse political statements that they don’t believe in. (Possibly making arguments about religious freedom of expression too, but I haven’t read into the details). It‘s easy to see how this case could relate to GC people’s rights, at work and so on.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-49350891

It really boils down to this:

If you are a service provider, should you be legally forced to say or do something that conflicts with your personal beliefs?

If you think the answer is ‘yes’, then does that extend to everything? Touch male genitalia? Endorse far right extremism? Promote sex with children?

Of course it is morally right to support gay marriage. But nobody should be legally forced to support it. That is what the case is about.

Service providors should have the right to refuse service for ANY/NO reason.

My husband was raised in communism he would not want to live like that again. We should have the choice to say no, we should have freedom of thought and belief/lack of. IMO

Religious or personal beliefs have no place within a business.

If you’re not inciting criminal activity then I don’t think you should be able to deny in this case.

If they forced the baker to partake in gay marriage or come along to a protest on it, then fair enough, absolutely not.

But the bakers job is to bake and decorate cakes to the customers request, presumably he advertised that he can ‘add any message’ he’s not the moral police. If he can’t do his job, he shouldn’t work there.

I also think refusing the pill or abortion because of ‘religious beliefs’ if it’s in your job description to do so, shouldn’t be accepted.

Individuals have a right to say whatever they want, to not say whatever they want, to disagree with things and to agree with things.

When it comes to businesses you should not be able to discriminate or not fulfil requirements if they are within the remits of what your business provides.

If he wanted ‘say no to gay marriage’, I would still think the same, although I would think the person requesting it was a twat.

It is completely different to the ball waxing case. Those businesses did not provide a ball waxing service. They refused as they did not do this service, not because they didn’t like trans women, the bakers refused because they didn’t want to, despite providing this service.

PixieLumos if your way of thinking prevails, a Jewish printer would be forced to print leaflets with anti-Semitic slogans for a Nazi rally and a black web designer would be forced to create a website for a white supremacist fundraiser.

Neither of these two businesses would be legally permitted to refuse to do so.

Right now, while they are not allowed to say "I don't serve customers with your views" (illegal), they can say "I'll do xyz for you, but I am not printing/designing that" (legal).

They can't refuse to serve customers espousing ideologies they don't agree with, but they can refuse to be made a party to the promotion of these ideologies.

Do you really think the state should force the businesses in either example to comply with the customer's wishes?

(For the purposes of this case and this discussion, we are ognoring of course that businesses can always find other ways of refusing the render a service, like saying they're fully booked or don't have the skills or whatever.)

^ignoring

So, to follow your example, a t-shirt printer should have to print the following if requested:

"NAMBLA - because child-adult love is beautiful."

Antisemitic cartoons from Der Sturmer (as found in history books).

"It's not rape, it's surprise sex."

"Women who've had abortions are going to hell."

Are you suggesting that a t-shirt printer, who started out happy to print up shirts with someone's photo of their pet dog on the front, or "Freda's hen night" or "Riding for Oxfam" should also be compelled to print the slogans they find offensive? Are you really happy with that as an end outcome?

^to render a service

FFS butterfingers

If he wanted ‘say no to gay marriage’, I would still think the same, although I would think the person requesting it was a twat

You mentioned abortion: what if someone came in requesting a cake with a dead fetus and the slogan “abortion is murder” on it. Should they be compelled to creatively ice a dead fetus, but you’d think the requesting person was a twat?

To be clear, if you’re going to be consistent you have to be happy that absolutely anything could be requested to be iced on a cake and could not be refused.

He wasn't even campaigning against gay marriage, he was simply holding a neutral position, as he's fully entitled to do.

If they forced the baker ......to come along to a protest on it, then fair enough, absolutely not

That is effectively what they were doing.

Anyone on here supporting this appeal is effectively supporting compelled speech.

Pixie, is me not supporting surrogacy homophobic, since it's the only way gay men can become biological parents? Should I be forced to say "Support Surrogacy, it's wonderful" on a cake?

I am obedient and therefore I have the right to be left in peace

This basically exactly summarises the message imparted by a lot of the businesses/ politicians saying "TWAW".

I think businesses and individuals should be treated differently anyway as long as the individual does not have to physically do anything that is not in the realms of their business.

Waxing balls - not what the business does, can deny.

Decorating a cake with a customers request - what the business does, shouldn’t deny unless illegal.

It’s completly different to the ball waxing case. If that case was ‘we do wax balls but are refusing to do yours solely because we/I don’t like transwomen’ that would not be acceptable either.

Earlywalker, how about if, rather than balls, it was bikini line waxing, or leg waxing. Should a woman be forced to wax a transwoman's legs because he says they're a woman? Even though she only believes females are women? It's just legs, right?

So, sticking to speech here, if we CAN say what we want:
I can say that a man who comes to me and wants to become a Guide leader, and says that he identifies as a woman, is not in fact a woman, but is a man.
And another leader is perfectly free to say "yes, this person is a woman, they have always been a woman and their biology is irrelevant, in fact it is female biology" and to say "yes they can be a leader".

And likewise parents would be free to say "yes I believe that this person is a woman and suitable to be a leader" or "no, I want a female leader for my child and I do not believe that this person is a woman".

I would donate to crowd funding for Ashers over this if they have to pay for any of this.

Each of you, for himself or herself, by himself or herself, and on his or her own responsibility, must speak. It is a solemn and weighty responsibility and not lightly to be flung aside at the bullying of pulpit, press, government or politician. Each must decide for himself or herself alone what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn’t. You cannot shirk this and be a man, to decide it against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor. It is traitorous both against yourself and your country.
Let men label you as they may, if you alone of all the nation decide one way, and that way be the right way by your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country, hold up your head for you have nothing to be ashamed of.
It doesn’t matter what the press says. It doesn’t matter what the politicians or the mobs say. It doesnn’t matter if the whole country decides that something wrong is something right. Republics are founded on one principle above all else: The requirement that we stand up for what we believe in. no matter the odds or consequences.
When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move. Your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth and tell the whole world:
“No, you move.“ - Mark Twain

I also think refusing the pill or abortion because of ‘religious beliefs’ if it’s in your job description to do so, shouldn’t be accepted.

It happens all the time within the NHS. I was refused an abortion at my doctors because they wanted me to see how nature develops - this was a request to have an abortion to prevent a third miscarriage. I had two children under 5 by then and two previous miscarriages. I ended up going to BPAS to have that abortion. Phone call made to them whilst standing in a phone box. Will be forever grateful for that service. I never wanted to go through a third miscarriage.

A cyber security company recently refused to provide a service to 8chan on the grounds that they couldn't morally support the sites content. Is that OK?

One of the banks refused to let a GC group open an account with them because the didn't support their goals. Is that OK?

It cuts both ways unfortunately. If we are free not to endorse/ provide support for anyone else's beliefs, then equally no one else has to do the same for us. But if we compel people to do so, we can also be compelled against our beliefs.

It’s completly different to the ball waxing case. If that case was ‘we do wax balls but are refusing to do yours solely because we/I don’t like transwomen’ that would not be acceptable either

It was more about not liking to touch a creepy stranger's balls and cock. Is that ok with you?

And the belief that you can compel speech in this way is naive in the extreme. Services will simply provide a list of slogans that they are prepared to provide. So if I was a baker abortion is murder would not be on the list of slogans I can make. You haven't changed my beliefs in the slightest because that is an impossible task.

I'm a business writer and translator and also build and maintain websites for my writing clients.

You can bet your bottom dollar that I will refuse to create an e-book for a client espousing views like "trans people are an abomination" or "foreigners are all dirty criminals", I won't translate "Der Stürmer" pamphlets for an English neo-Nazi group and I wouldn't build a website for an anti-vaccination campaign group or a fundraiser for the legal defence of an anti-abortion activist who torched a clinic.

And I am thoroughly disgusted by those who think freedom of speech only applies to the views that they like and definitely not to those who dissent from majority opinions they agree with.

No, as Rosa Luxembourg said, freedom is always the freedom of dissenters.

Freedoms that only the right kinds of people may avail themselves of, those are not freedoms, but privileges for a select few. And who's to guarantee that they continue to belong to that select few even when majority opinions change or a different party rules?

But what we have as per the European Convention On Human Rights are Freedoms that apply to all. Even to those whose views I find offensive and upsetting.

I lived in a country that didn't have them. Never again.

early and the likes appear to believe a business should have to ice cakes with absolutely any slogan including:
Be kind to baby rapists, they’re only human.
Some people like fingering three year olds - get over it!
Some people think blacks look like monkeys - get over it!
And they’ll be ok to do this cause, y’know, they can secretly be thinking the people ordering the cakes are ‘twats’.

Is that right early?

I think to conflate this particular case with abortion rights and gay marriage is a dangerous precedent. I have to state right away that I think the DUP is toxic politics.

This is about icing on a fecking cake. How petty can you get?