Have your cake and eat it - but don't use it to promote your agenda

Customer Gareth Lee requested a cake featuring the Sesame Street characters Bert and Ernie, iced with the message: "Support Gay Marriage." His order was initially accepted at a branch of Ashers in Belfast city centre, but two days later the baking firm's head office contacted Mr Lee to say the firm would not make the cake.

The family-run baking company, based in County Antrim, has described the same-sex marriage slogan as "inconsistent" with its religious beliefs. But it points out that the company's issue was with the slogan and not Mr Lee, claiming it would have refused the same order from a heterosexual client.

As he arrived outside the Supreme Court for the start of the case in May, Mr McArthur said: "We didn't say no because of the customer; we'd served him before, we'd serve him again. "It was because of the message. But some people want the law to make us support something with which we disagree."

In the court's judgement (case reference [2018] UKSC 49), president of the Supreme Court Lady Hale ruled that the bakers did not refuse to fulfil the order because of his sexual orientation. "They would have refused to make such a cake for any customer, irrespective of their sexual orientation," she said. "Their objection was to the message on the cake, not to the personal characteristics of Mr Lee." She added: "Accordingly, this court holds that there was no discrimination on the ground of the sexual orientation of Mr Lee."

"This conclusion is not in any way to diminish the need to protect gay people and people who support gay marriage from discrimination," said Lady Hale. "It is deeply humiliating, and an affront to human dignity, to deny someone a service because of that person's race, gender, disability, sexual orientation, religion or belief. But that is not what happened in this case."
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-45789759