The Equality Commission in Northern Ireland have announced that they will proceed with a civil case against Asher’s bakery, the family-run Christian business which faced threats of legal action from the Comission after refusing to bake a cake ordered by two gay-rights activists bearing the slogan “support gay marriage”.
According to RTE, general manager of the bakers Daniel McArthur said he had now received a letter from the commission claiming his stance breached legislation.
He said the letter told the company if it did not offer compensation within seven days it would face litigation.
Mr McArthur said his family would not be forced to promote a cause that goes against their conscientious view that marriage is between a man and a woman.
“We feel that the Equality Commission are pursuing us because of our beliefs that marriage is between a man and a woman,” he said.
“It feels like a David and Goliath battle because on one hand we have the Equality Commission who are a public body, they’re funded by taxpayers’ money, they have massive resources at their disposal whereas we are a small family business and we have limited resources at our disposal.
“We’re continuing to hold to the stand that we took originally because we believe it’s biblical, we believe it’s what God would want us to do, and we also think that if we do cave in to the Equality Commission at this point it’ll put pressure on other citizens who are defending their view of traditional marriage.”
Asher’s bakery is being supported in the court case by the Christian Institute.
Meanwhile, Fr Tim Bartlett, a member of the Catholic Council for Social Affairs who was on the panel of this year’s Belfast Pride even, issued a statement saying that he would be “withdrawing my engagement” with LGBT groups until the case concluded.
The statement, made to the BBC’s Nolan Show, said: “I will be writing today to those groups from the gay community, with whom I have had a very constructive and ongoing engagement in recent years, to say that I am withdrawing my engagement until the right of all people, in this case Christians, to freedom of conscience is vindicated and respected by the Equality Commission and the gay community.
“I also want to know why the chief commissioner of the Equality Commission talked quite openly about the Ashers case during the Gay Pride debate in Belfast but has since claimed he is not free to talk about it in public debate.”
His comments were criticised by John O’Doherty of the Rainbow Project, a health support group for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people and their families.
“There are fundamental issues that need to be addressed and these need to be discussed, the answer isn’t to walk away and say until you agree with me I’m not going to bother talking to you” he said.
The equality commission said it “would prefer not to have to litigate” but added the case “raises issues of public importance regarding the extent to which suppliers of goods and services can refuse service on grounds of sexual orientation, religious belief and political opinion”.
The commission added that any decision as to whether or not discrimination had occurred would be “a matter for the court”.