The legal judgment

The five sitting Supreme Court justices concluded that the incident did not constitute discrimination because the Mcarthurs did not refuse the cake order based on Mr Lee’s sexuality, but because of the message he requested that they write on it.

Lady Hale told the court: “They would have refused to make such a cake for any customer, irrespective of their sexual orientation.

It is deeply humiliating, and an affront to human dignity, to deny someone a service because of that person’s race, gender, disability, sexual orientation, religion or belief. But that is not what happened in this case. The bakers could not refuse to supply their goods to Mr Lee because he was a gay man or supported gay marriage, but that is quite different from obliging them to supply a cake iced with a message with which they profoundly disagreed”