The owners of Ashers Baking Company have confirmed that they will appeal the ruling of mid-May that the firm had discriminated against a customer by refusing to decorate a cake with a slogan supporting same sex marriage.
Many have commented on the concerning turn this ruling has taken for society in general, as well as Christians specifically.
The range of comments began with a quip from a Daily Telegraph columnist who pondered on what this ruling has to say about ‘our’ tolerant – or was that totalitarian – society?
It was also noted that, ironically, Ashers bakery is in a fiercely sectarian part of Belfast and that the McArthurs serve both Protestants and Catholics. According to Eilis Irish O’Hanlon of the Independent, the increasingly shrill proponents of gay marriage seem ‘less interested in finding the truth than in identifying [themselves] as members of an enlightened elite’.
Unique observation
The Evangelical Alliance noted that the protection of ideas and political opinion had been dragged into the discrimination claim in the ruling. The McArthur family was found to have discriminated on the grounds of sexual orientation and on the basis of religion and political opinion.
Peter Lynas, a former barrister and Northern Ireland director of Evangelical Alliance, commented: ‘It is important to remember there was no mention of political opinion in the original letter of claim. The Equality Commission, which supports same sex marriage and is by definition a political organisation, added this ground later. Will it now regulate which political opinions are allowed under equality law and which are unacceptable?’
With that inclusion of ‘political opinion’ in the ruling, one is left wondering if this was a ruling handed down in North Korea, not Northern Ireland.
The nation and its leaders appear to have been swept along on a tide of Romans 2-style support for equal marriage. The very ‘freedoms’ which are being celebrated as ‘won’ have however, in that short phrase ‘discriminated on the grounds of…political opinion’, laid the path for a less benign leadership to restrict the right to hold any view contrary to that which the state sanctions. And that is surely not something to be celebrated by anyone.
