Gay Marriage: Gay Cakes, Gay Fuckwittery

Independent.

I don't give a fuck if someone wants a gay cake or or if someone won't make it.

Can you think of a list of messages a baker wouldn't want to ice?

Lets' start with - by way of example - a cake reading ' DEATH TO THE GAYS!'

People can just say no, you know.

Cakegate: Tits

Even though I believe Christian nutters should be free not to make gay wedding cakes, this Saturday Night Live sketch amused me.

Cakegate: Eat It!

The McArthurs’ appeal, which started two days ago, was adjourned when the Northern Ireland attorney-general unexpectedly introduced a new argument. This was that these regulations banning discrimination may themselves discriminate against people such as the McArthurs on the grounds of their religious beliefs or political opinions. That was more or less the point made by the clearly bonkers Tatchell. Although he had originally supported Lee’s case, he said, he had changed his mind.

For now he had grasped the crucial issue. The McArthurs weren’t objecting to baking for a gay person — the bakery, they said, had many gay customers and at least one gay member of staff — but to baking a cake whose slogan ran smack up against their religious beliefs...

The Times.

Even a stopped mentalist clock...

Cakegate: Yup

The Independent.

Love it that these pieces cite Saint Peter Tatchell's damascene conversion, without pointing out what a reactionary postion he took before.

Matt: Another Baffling Cartoon

Telegraph.

Cakegate: Why Indeed?

Dear sir,

I am writing in response to Saint Peter Tatchell's change of mind about some gay cakes.

Yes, SOME FUCKING GAY CAKES!!!

Having a bakers saying they can't be arsed to put some silly message about gay marriage on a cake is clearly the most important thing in the world.

This is how Hitler started.

yours

Mr Nooky Bumcheese.

It's not 'censorship' when you can get your stupid cake made round the corner.

Cakegate: Ulster Says No!

The Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland will this week begin hearing the great “gay cake” case. This may sound like a joke, but is a deadly serious matter concerning freedom of expression and the right of a person to hold an opinion or object to someone else’s.

The appellants are Ashers, a bakery run by two devout Christians, Karen and Colin McArthur. Last May, they were fined for refusing to bake a cake for a gay couple. The law states that people cannot be discriminated against in the provision of services on the ground of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation. However, they declined the order not because their customers were homosexual but because they were asked to ice the slogan “Support Gay Marriage” on the cake.

The judge in the district court ruled that although the bakers were devout Christians and opposed to same-sex marriage, they were not entitled to refuse to provide the service. However, they were not unwilling to bake the cake, rather they didn’t want to endorse a view to which they did not subscribe. More than that, the legislation allowing gay marriage in the rest of the United Kingdom has not been introduced in Northern Ireland. The McArthurs objected to promoting a change in the law with which they did not agree.

We are in the realms of thought crime here and even Peter Tatchell, the mad gay rights campaigner who initially welcomed the prosecution, has changed his mind about it. He said the law against discrimination was meant to protect people with differing views, not to force upon others opinions to which they conscientiously object. Indeed so. The conviction must be overturned. 

Telegraph leader.

Yup.

Cakegate: Erratic Lunatic Changes Mind Again

Christian bakers who refused to make a cake with the slogan “Support gay marriage” should not have been found guilty of discrimination, according to Peter Tatchell, the gay rights activist who initially supported the case against them.

As Ashers Baking Co prepares to take its case to the Court of Appeal in Belfast this week, Mr Tatchell said that he felt bound to defend “freedom of conscience, expression and religion”.

A county court judge ruled last May that Daniel and Amy McArthur, owners of Ashers, were guilty of discrimination for refusing to make the cake for Gareth Lee, a gay rights campaigner.

Mr Tatchell publicly supported Mr Lee, saying that a victory for the couple “would have led to a situation where anyone could claim the right to discriminate on the basis that they disagreed with another person’s beliefs”.

Yesterday he said that he still disagreed with Ashers but that the cake request had been refused not because Mr Lee was gay but because of the message he wanted on it. “This raises the question, should Muslim printers be obliged to publish cartoons of Muhammad? Or Jewish ones publish the words of a Holocaust denier? Or gay bakers accept orders for cakes with homophobic slurs?”

He added that he would now be willing to testify in support of the couple in court if asked. 

The Times.

Sad.

Still baffled as to why anyone still takes this self-publicist loon seriously.

PS Here's the shape-shifting lizard's original article.

What an utter nutter.

Cakegate: Are You Stupid?

Lost me when he said he gets paid THOUSANDS for making a gaymarriage cake, but yeah, go somewhere else and stop whining.

Who cares if some religious nutter won't make you a cake?

Get over it.

Homophobia Watch: Hairdresser On Fire

A hairdresser has taken dramatic action after a customer refused to let a stylist cut his son’s hair when he realised he was gay

Russell Hughes, who owns Russell Paul Hairdressing in Prestatyn, North Wales, wants to make sure bigoted people never enter his salon again.

He has put a sign in his window which states: “If you are racist, sexist, homophobic or an a***hole... don’t come in.”

It comes after a man called in to ask if someone could cut his son’s hair, reports the Daily Post.

But he walked back out again after questioning the sexual orientation of 23-year-old stylist Richard Evans.

Russell, 49, explained: “It was a normal busy day at the salon when a man called in with his wife and child, who must have been about 10 years old...

“He asked if anyone could cut his son’s hair and I told him yes, that’s fine.

“I was already with a client and so I asked my colleague Richard if he would do it.

“The man came up to me at that point and said: ‘I’m not being funny but did you just say that lad’s going to cut my son’s hair’, to which I replied ‘yes’.

“He then said, ‘Well I assume he’s gay and I don’t want him cutting my lad’s hair so could you do it’, to which I said no because I’m gay as well.”

Russell, whose salon is the official salon for the cast of Prestatyn movie Womble [!], in which he also appears, said the man stood up and left without another word, but the exchange left staff shocked...

Mirror.

Much of the gay media thought this sign banning bigots was AWESOME!

And obviously completely different from, say, a Christian bakers refusing to make a cake supporting gay marriage.

Letters Of The Day: Love Thy Neighbour

SIR – Many of those who voted in favour of legalising same-sex marriage in the Republic of Ireland will have been Catholic.

The country has rejected an archaic and divisive form of Christianity in favour of one that follows Christ’s teaching to love thy neighbour.

Rebekah Reville Joy
Barnet, Hertfordshire

SIR – For the Church to pretend to have always been the guardian of marriage is disingenuous, since for the first millennium it did not even have a ceremony to celebrate it.

Some Christian groups expressly forbade it, and while the pre-Reformation church accepted the need for reproduction, it always placed celibacy on a higher moral plain.

Rev Dr John Cameron
St Andrews, Fife

SIR – Edward Thomas (Letters, May 24) asks why the rights of a gay couple should outweigh those of a Christian family business. Only someone who has not had to endure many years of stigmatisation due to a state of being beyond their choosing would ask such a question.

What he should be asking is why Christians, who should surely know better, are still intent on perpetuating a situation where one part of the population is denied the same rights as the rest.

Gary Spring
Southgate, Glamorgan

The Sunday Telegraph.

Letter Of The Day: Cakegate

The Guardian.

See also Simon Jenkins The Law Can't Create Tolerance.

Gay Cake Row: Sledgehammer Smashes Cake

A judge has ruled that a Christian-run bakery discriminated against a gay customer over their refusal to make a cake with a slogan supporting same-sex marriage...

BBC News.

Blimey. If you can't find a gayer who likes baking cakes, then we're doomed...

Liberty: If I'd Known You Were Coming...

Is there a real threat to the religious liberty of Christians in the west? If a Belfast bakery refuses to ice a customer’s cake with a gay marriage message it believes is contrary to the Bible, and then is taken to court, is this a threat to religious liberty? In the US, the claim of “religious liberty” is fast becoming a standard Republican talking point, and we can expect to hear much more of it as the primary season advances.

Democracies can certainly persecute unpopular minorities. No one doubts, for example, that homosexuals were discriminated against in both law and practice throughout most of the 20th century and that this discrimination was both unjust and widely approved, as it still is in Russia and large parts of sub-Saharan Africa today. It’s at least possible that conservative Christians might at some stage end up as despised and disadvantaged a minority as some of their victims have been in the past.

Whether it is in fact happening is a different question. Many of the cases of supposed discrimination amount to Christians wishing to retain a right they had until recently to discriminate against others. They claim then that it would violate their consciences to do or say certain things which society as a whole has determined are moral. This won’t do. Conscience cannot provide “a get out of jail free” card, neither metaphorically nor, should it come to that, literally. We all have consciences but there is no guarantee they will lead us to the same conclusions. This fact is literally tragic, as the Greeks knew. Nonetheless, any society has to privilege some ethical viewpoint and some virtues.

'What kind of cakes are they?' 'Fruitcakes.' Irish Times.

In the west we privilege conflicting but broadly liberal values. We no longer privilege the authority of the Bible. So, once we have determined that discrimination against homosexuals violates the principle of equality – and that is the settled position in both law and public opinion now – the fact that some people are compelled by their consciences to disagree does not exempt them from behaving as if it were true. There cannot be a special exemption for mistaken beliefs held on religious grounds when these harm others.

The difficult cases come when what is at stake is not behaviour, or not just behaviour, but speech or opinion. If there were a clear line between advocacy and action, this would be less difficult. But there is not, any more than there is a clear line between act and orientation. This is where the bakery case, unlike others, is complicated. Christian attempts to convert others may be obnoxious and embarrassing but they should not be illegal as well. There is always a case for tact when dealing with difficult employees. No one should be compelled to make propaganda for a cause they think false or pernicious. With all that said, the overwhelming fact is that claims of persecution are not just groundless but morally distasteful. Compared to the monstrous persecution suffered by Christians in Muslim countries like Iraq or officially atheist ones, being asked to ice a cake for a gay wedding is hardly martyrdom. It’s just the price of living in a civilised society.

Guardian editorial.

Dunno really. 

If someone doesn't want to bake you a cake, fuck 'em, and go somewhere that does. 

And similarly, if someone asks you to put a message on a cake you really don't approve of ('God hate fags/bakers!'?), I guess you should be free not to do so.

But it's only a fucking cake for the Anti-Christ's sake.

Or am I missing the point here?

Bert & Ernie: I Blame The Muslims

Muslim printers could be forced to produce cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed if the case against a Christian bakery which refused to make a Sesame Street gay marriage cake is upheld, a prominent human rights barrister has claimed.

Aidan O’Neill QC said a discrimination case against Ashers Baking Company – which cancelled an order to make a cake featuring the characters Bert and Ernie arm in arm under the slogan ‘support gay marriage’ – could undermine freedom of conscience.

Mr O’Neill was commissioned by the Christian Institute, which is supporting the bakery’s legal defence, to provide a legal opinion on the implications of the case, which is due to come before a court in Belfast later this month.

He said the arguments upon which the legal action is based could also justify forcing a T-shirt company with a lesbian owner to print tops denouncing same-sex marriage as an “abomination” or an atheist web designer to build a website claiming the world was made by God in six days...

Daily Telegraph.

Oh, who gives a fuck if someone won't bake a cake?

Go to another bakers, don't give these Christian fucktards your money.