Britain’s Supreme Court rules in favour of Christian bakery in landmark ‘gay cake’ case
Activist accused baker of discrimination for refusing to make cake with ‘support gay marriage’ written on it, but judges disagreed
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A bakery run by a Christian family in Northern Ireland on Wednesday won a landmark case in Britain’s highest court over its refusal to make a cake decorated with the words “support gay marriage”.
The Supreme Court upheld the owners’ appeal against a May decision that found them guilty of discriminating against gay activist Gareth Lee.
The case pitted Northern Ireland’s strong Protestant and Catholic communities against LGBT groups testing the breadth of the UK territory’s anti-discrimination laws.
The ruling explained that the bakery’s “objection was to the message on the cake, not any personal characteristics of the messenger, or anyone with whom he was associated”.
The top of the cake would have also had a picture of the bedroom-sharing Bert and Ernie Muppets from the US children’s programme Sesame Street.
Ashers Baking Company – a business with 80 employees across Britain that takes its name from an Old Testament figure – took the order but declined to make the cake in 2014.
The case came as marriage between same-sex couples becomes increasingly accepted across Europe and the West as a whole.
Northern Ireland is not covered by Britain’s law allowing gay marriage.
It is ... an affront to human dignity to deny someone a service because of ... sexual orientation. But that is not what happened
Lee’s lawyer Robin Allen said the tremendous media attention generated by the case across the UK has been difficult for his client.
“This was a relatively small incident in his life which has become enormously significant and continues to be so,” the lawyer said.
The chief judge on Britain’s Supreme Court said the ruling should not be read as condoning discrimination.
“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,” judge Brenda Hale said. “But that is not what happened in this case.”
Lee ordered the cake in Belfast for a private function marking International Day Against Homophobia.
The bakery accepted both the order and payment.
It then called back two days later to explain that it could not top the cake with the icing featuring the Muppets and the marriage slogan.
The bakery argued that it opposed the political message requested by Lee rather than his sexual orientation.
Hale said the law supported this logic.
“The bakers could not refuse to supply their goods to Mr Lee because he was a gay man or supported gay marriage,” she said. “But that is quite different from obliging them to supply a cake iced with a message with which they profoundly disagreed.”
The justification in the British Supreme Court’s ruling is different from one used by its US counterpart that cleared a Colorado baker of discrimination in June. That ruling found that the civil rights group suing the baker showed animus by targeting him based on his religious beliefs.
