Workers Solidarity Movement

Last year the bakery Ashers was found guilty of discrimination when they refused to bake a cake that had an image of Bert and Ernie on it with the words “Support Gay Marriage”.

23rd October they lost their appeal against that verdict, with the judge ruling that the bakers were not allowed to provide a service only to people who agreed with their religious beliefs.

At the time of the original case claims were being made of religious persecution; that the McArthur family who own the bakery were being persecuted against because of their religion. We can guess though that Ashers wouldn’t have a problem with baking a cake for a child's baptism or christening that was born out of wedlock; not to mention they sell pork sausage rolls in their bakeries and their uniforms are (more than likely) made from more than one material (all things the Bible forbids).

This has got very little to do with their so-called sincerely held religious beliefs and more to do with bigotry. This is a case of Ashers picking and choosing what they like from church and dressing it up as some kind of moral principal.

When a business opens their door they're open to all. Their objection for baking the cake was that they would be promoting marriage equality - but if a postperson delivers a letter from a credit card company are they promoting a credit card company or providing a service? It's quite clear they're simply providing a service and the same is true for Ashers.

While we shouldn’t spend too much time focusing on this case considering that as a community we have bigger fish to fry it is nice for once for the homophobes to be the group of people left fuming.