Arising from Ashers - Village Magazine

June 2015 35

F I am a baker am I really going to run the rule over all my

customers to see how they intend to use my cakes before I

make a sale? Baking would get a lot harder and a lot less

commercial if I took on that task. I would not be a happy baker

if someone made me liable for how my cakes were used, what

they celebrated, and whose events they graced. I am a baker I

would say and this is none of my business.

Ashers bakery in the North would have it otherwise in

refusing to bake a cake with a motto supporting same sex

marriage for a gay customer. They argued for freedom of con-

science but actually sought the freedom to discriminate. A

Belfast Court has just found them guilty of discrimination on

foot of a case supported by the Equality Commission of North-

ern Ireland. The case has generated mixed responses. Fintan

O’Toole appeared to agree with Ashers Bakery in a recent

Irish Times article.

The bakers won’t bake the cake for the wedding. If that got

wings where would it all end? The printers don’t print the

invites. Well that’s already happened south of the border.

Maybe jewellers will lose the run of themselves and won’t sell

the rings. Travel agents will refuse the bookings. We all know

what you’ll be doing on your honeymoon. The hotel, inevita-

bly, won’t make a room available. How could it? Same-sex

marriage, will not be much fun if this became the new norm.

It’s easy to parody it all, but it would be a mistake to forget

that discrimination hurts. It hurts so much that people gener-

ally put the head down, suck up the insult, and turn their back

without challenging it. It’s too hard and nothing seems to

change anyway. Discrimination, where somebody is treated

less favourably just because of who they are, undermines not

just your conﬁdence, it drains your sense of self worth.

Discrimination doesn’t do much for the perpetrator. Stere-

otypes cloud reason, common sense, and any ability to relate

as humans. Personal characteristics get in the way of common

humanity and permit you to do things that, in any other con-

text, you would ﬁnd abhorrent. You end up contradicted in

your values and diminished in your potential.

Discrimination is bad for society. It divides society into the

‘normal’ and the ‘other’. A false and suﬀocating homogeneity

takes hold and ties us all to its yoke. Societal values are under-

mined and the world becomes a harsher place to live in.

Conform or leave becomes the only choice. Disadvantage

becomes so common it is as if this is the way life is supposed to

be.

That is why we have legislation, north and south, to prohibit

discrimination. You only get mutual acceptance where a basic

standard of non-discrimination is set out in law and enjoys

popular acceptance. No one forced us to do this. Politicians in

the south campaigned on the promise of introducing such

legislation way back in . We elected them on the basis of

this promise and, strange as it may seem, they kept that

promise. We have had the Equal Status Act since .

The Act prohibits discrimination in the provision of goods

and services. Nine grounds are covered including the ground

of sexual orientation. There have been a small number of

important cases on this ground but no landslide. In part this

is because of under-reporting by those who experience dis-

crimination. In part it is because people accept that

discrimination is not to be tolerated, for everyone’s sake.

You would want to have a very good reason to allow dis-

crimination given its negative impact. That is why there are

few exceptions in our equality legislation. In fact, it is why

there should be even fewer exceptions. Exceptions diminish

the foundation stone established by the legislation and end up

endorsing discrimination, though certainly a Nazi cake or, in

the North, a triumphalist th of July cake might reasonably

be objected to. As an egalitarian baker I might not be too

happy where some of my cakes end up too. Even though dis-

crimination on any of the nine grounds might not be involved,

I should have to accept that I am only a baker. I can call up the

boundaries of incitement to hatred legislation, but only when

the extremes really misuse my cakes.

There is argument now in the North for a freedom of con-

science exception in the legislation. The Ashers Bakery case is

not a matter of conscience. It is a matter of exclusion. It is not

a matter of one person’s religious belief being compromised. It

is a matter of discrimination. Just as same sex marriage does

not threaten religious freedom, baking a cake does not under-

mine freedom of conscience.

The Equality Commission for Northern Ireland has done us

all a service in taking this case. It did so in a context of harsh

political pressure, and prevailed. It has valuably established

why we need eﬀective and independent equality bodies, for

everyone’s sake. •

Democracy depends on stringent

prohibition of discrimination on

speciﬁc, stated grounds.

By Niall Crowley

Arising from Ashers

POLITICS Discrimination

They argued

for freedom

of conscience

but actually

sought the

freedom to

discriminate

“