Ashers Bakery court judgment does not make sense

Dear Editor, The judgment that Ashers Bakery acted in a discriminatory fashion by refusing to decorate a cake with the slogan “Support Gay Marriage” raises a terrifying spectre of a future where the facile slogan “Don’t like gay marriage? Don’t get one” seems but a fond memory.

I do not understand how Judge Isobel Brownlie could say the bakery unlawfully discriminated against Mr Gareth Lee “on the grounds of his sexual orientation”, when the company had a long history of serving Mr Lee and other gay customers.

I am especially alarmed by the notion that the bakery’s refusal to ice the political slogan was direct religiously-motivated discrimination against a political idea, support for that idea being “indissociable from sexual orientation”. This is clearly nonsense, when it is obvious that most supporters of gay marriage are not gay, but is also worrying because it suggests, as Ashers manager Daniel McArthur said, that all business owners have to be willing to promote any cause or campaign, no matter how much or why they disagree with it.

Yours etc.,

Kevin Gilloran,

Swords,

Co. Dublin.