The great Belfast bake-off: Asher’s ‘gay cake’ decision
Less prosecutorial zeal may be the easiest way to address such issues
The case of Asher’s Baking Company and the £36.50 cake – costs now running to some £180,000 – has something of the humorist AP Herbert about it. Herbert’s fictional Misleading Cases played hilariously with the absurdities of the law, most famously over the legal standing of a cheque written to the Inland Revenue on the side of a cow “of malevolent aspect”; usually, however, to make an important point.
And behind what some will see as the comical circumstances of the “gay cake” legal dispute between Asher’s and customer Gareth Lee – over his wish to decorate it with “Support Gay Marriage” – there are indeed important legal and civil rights issues. In essence, when rights conflict which trumps the other? Which should prevail when the right to freedom of speech and religion conflicts with that of a citizen not to be discriminated against on grounds of sexual orientation? Although, in this case many may not see the erosion of either right as particularly oppressive.