Tatchell backs bakers in gay cake appeal
GAY rights campaigner Peter Tatchell yesterday voiced his support for a Christian bakery which refused to sell a cake with a gay rights slogan.
He said he had changed his mind about Ashers Baking Company in Belfast, which was found to have broken anti-discrimination laws when the owners declined an order for a cake with the slogan ‘support gay marriage’.
Mr Tatchell said: ‘Much as I wish to defend the gay community, I also want to defend freedom of conscience, expression and religion.’
His change of heart comes as the family who run the bakery will tomorrow launch an appeal.
The McArthur family are challenging a court’s finding in May last year that they had breached Northern Ireland’s political and sexual orientation discrimination laws when they refused to take the order from activist Gareth Lee for a £36.50 cake. The company was also told to pay £500 in compensation to Mr Lee, who had wanted the cake to carry the slogan along with a picture of Sesame Street characters Bert and ernie, and the logo of the Queer Space pressure group.
Writing in The Guardian, Mr Tatchell, 64, said he had initially applauded the verdict of district j udge Isobel Brownlie. But he added: ‘I have changed my mind. Refusing to facilitate a message in support of same-sex marriage is not sexuality discrimination. It is discrimination against an idea, not against a person.
‘The law against political discrimination was meant to protect people with differing political views, not to force others to further political views to which they conscientiously object.’ The judge’s decision set a worrying precedent, Mr Tatchell said, and could encourage far-Right agitators to force Muslim printers to publish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, or Jewish printers to reproduce Holocaust denial material. He went on: ‘Will gay bakers have to accept orders for cakes with homophobic slurs?’
His intervention could open up a major rift with other equality campaigners.
The Northern Ireland equality Commission financed the case against Ashers, and the verdict against the company was hailed by local gay organisations.
Mr Tatchell, who stood as a Labour candidate in the 1983 Bermondsey by-election and lost the party’s once- safe seat, is currently leading a Defend Free Speech campaign alongside both Left-leaning and conservative allies, including the Christian Institute think-tank, which funded the McArthurs in their court battle.
‘It is discrimination against an idea, not a person’