In 2014, Gareth Lee, a member of the LGBT campaign group Queer Space, approached Ashers Bakery, a custom cake-making service in the Northern Irish capital, Belfast, with a business order. He wanted the bakery to make a cake decorated with an image of Bert and Ernie, the protagonists of the U.S. children’s programme Sesame Street , and the words ‘Supports Gay Marriage’, for an event to mark the end of the Northern Ireland Anti-Homophobic Week.
However, shortly after the order was placed, Colin and Karen McArthur, the owners of the bakery, insisted that they wouldn’t be able to go through with it because the bakery was a “Christian business”, offering Mr. Lee a full refund. Legal action soon ensued after the bakery owners rejected a request from Northern Ireland’s Equality Commission for a modest payment, with a court awarding Mr. Lee £500 in damages, and the court of appeal upholding the ruling that the bakers had broken Britain’s anti-discrimination legislation. However, supported by a campaign group The Christian Institute, the couple have taken the case all the way to Britain’s Supreme Court, where hearings took place last week.
The case has garnered much attention. In the U.K., marriage is treated as a devolved issue, and unlike in England, Wales and Scotland, same-sex marriage is not recognised in Northern Ireland. Repeated attempts to change the situation have been beaten down, with Prime Minister Theresa May recently refusing to intervene and encourage backing for a cross-party Bill that would introduce same sex-marriage to Northern Ireland. The Bill was introduced into the House of Lords earlier this year, but though it has passed the early stages, it has not to progressed further. In 2015, the Northern Ireland Assembly also voted to introduce same sex marriage, but was blocked by the Conservative government’s ally in the House of Commons, the Democratic Unionist Party. In the Supreme Court, the appellant’s barrister sought to argue that they had been “penalised by the state” for failing to create and provide a product that carried a slogan they had “genuine objection in conscience” to. Mr. Lee had told previous hearings that he had been left feeling like a “lesser person” following the refusal, while his lawyers argued that no exceptions could be made to equality legislation.
The seemingly innocuous issue of a cake has become a battleground over religious freedom, and equality legislation beyond Britain. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court heard an appeal relating to a Colorado bakery’s refusal to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple. In a separate case, a Californian judge supported a bakery owner’s decision to refuse a cake on freedom of expression grounds. Whether the free expression spin put on the case will convince Britain’s top court remains to be seen.
Legal position
Mr. Lee’s case is being backed by Northern Ireland’s Equality Commission, concerned at the precedent that its loss could set the legal position in Northern Ireland. “It confirms the legal position, which underpins our advice to employers and service providers, that organisations providing services to the public cannot discriminate against people on any of the grounds covered by anti-discrimination legislation governing the provision of goods, facilities and services to the public in Northern Ireland,” its chief executive said. Its representative at the Supreme Court hearing urged the need for the clarity on the fact that the law was there “to protect people…this needs certainty”.
