Fionola may see loss from new perspective

FIONOLA Meredith is arrogant to assume she speaks for all of us in saying that, “if Ashers loses in the Supreme Court this week, we all lose” (Comment, April 30). It would be no loss to me.

As a journalist, I would have expected Fionola to be sensitive to the importance of words and images. Yet, she dismisses this serious legal process as a “whole sorry saga” about “three disputed words”, a “warped, totalitarian fairytale” (she might think differently if she had been subject to some of the discrimination and abuse experienced by the LGBT community in Northern Ireland for decades).

She labels Gareth Lee as an “LGBT activist”, yet fails to acknowledge the McArthurs as Christian activists. And her article is accompanied by a sweet picture of a pretty young couple (Mr and Mrs McArthur), looking as if cake wouldn’t melt in their mouths.

Fionola expresses concern that individuals and businesses may be “compelled to accept prevailing political ideas”: but, rather, this is about people and businesses being required to live and operate within the law.

She writes that this case is about personal freedom — “the freedom to choose your own political and religious beliefs and to express them in your own way”.

No one is denying anyone, including the McArthurs, the right to choose their beliefs: what is in question is how these are manifested in relation to others, specifically in a business context, which needs to be with equality and within the law.

The Bible sanctions the selling of one’s daughter into slavery (Exodus 21:7) and the buying and the owning of slaves (Leviticus 15: 19-24): if this is my religious belief, surely Fionola is not arguing that I be permitted to express this “in my own way”?

If Fionola was ordering two graduation cakes, for a son and a daughter, and the baker agreed to write a relevant message on the cake for the son, but refused for the daughter, on the basis that his religious belief was that a woman’s place is in the home, would she really accept that this was reasonable?

The McArthurs are keen to draw a distinction between the person (Mr Lee) and the message (Support Gay Marriage). Perhaps they might focus on the distinction between themselves, as individuals with their personal religious beliefs, which they have every right to hold and express, and the Ashers Baking Company, which they own, which has a responsibility to provide a service equally for everyone within the law.

The company would not have refused a cake with a message supporting marriage, or heterosexual marriage: it was the reference to “gay” that it rejected. I would consider this discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation.

It has taken me some time to think through this debate and I now hope that the Supreme Court rejects this appeal by the Ashers Baking Company and the McArthurs. And if Fionola Meredith sees this as a loss to her, then I have to say I hope she loses. Or perhaps she may come to see it from a fresh perspective.

MARK MARSHALL Belfast