An Unconscionable Clause

This Irish guy walks into a bakery in Belfast and says to the baker “I want you to bake me a cake”. “No problem”, says the baker. “How would you like me to decorate it?” “Well”, says the Irish guy, “I want a message of support for gay marriage written in icing on the top alongside a picture of Bert and Ernie from The Muppet Show.” “Ah”, says the baker shaking his head. “If I did that I would be complicit in celebrating gay marriage as acceptable in modern society, and since that would run contrary to my Christian values, you will have to get your cake elsewhere.” The unfortunate punchline to this story is that a member of the Democratic Unionist Party in Northern Ireland now wants to amend our equality legislation to make such discrimination legal. Challenging him has not been the piece of cake many people thought it would be.

Paul Givan is the politician who wants to introduce a Conscience Clause into the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2006. What this would mean is that anyone who provides goods or services to the general public could legally refuse to serve someone if they feel that, by providing the good or service requested, they would be acting in violation of their strongly held religious beliefs. The incident which sparked the row in the first place was the request refused by Asher’s Bakery in Belfast to bake a cake with a message which supported gay marriage. The person who made the request was not asking the bakery staff to suddenly fall in love with Lycra, Kylie or The Village People. He was not asking them to ditch their heterosexuality and embrace the Oscar Wilde in all of us. All he wanted them to do was bake a cake for him. That is what bakers tend to do after all. If a hairdresser styles the hair of a woman who works as an escort, must we assume that the hairdresser accepts and approves of her chosen profession? And why should it matter?

There have been many arguments offered in favour of the Conscience Clause. It has been said that without it, people of faith would be forced to choose between their livelihood and their beliefs. Really? I would suggest that if one’s faith is built on such poor foundations then the issue is with your faith, not the Equality Act. Nobody would be forced to surrender their religious beliefs just by serving someone whose faith they do not share. Likewise I would say that when legislation has been introduced which quite rightly advances Human Rights for every member of society, minority groups ought not be able to circumvent these provisions in order to retain the right to discriminate.

Proponents of the clause suggest that it is already the case that not everyone is treated equally under the law, and they point to section eleven of the Employment Act 1989 as proof.  This provides that Sikhs wearing turbans are not required to wear helmets on construction sites. However, such a provision, when acted upon, can never involve discriminating against another person. With the Conscience Clause suggested by Mr Givan, discrimination is always going to be an inevitable outcome.

In the mid-1990s, when I was a student at the University of Bristol, I suggested that the members of the Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Society dress up as soldiers for the Fresher’s Fair. This was around the height of the debate concerning the right of gay men and women to serve in the Armed Forces. The Officer Training Corps was to have the stall next to the LGB Society. I attempted to join the OTC but was told that I was not welcome because I am a homosexual. I firmly believed, then and now, that all students of the university should have the opportunity to join any of the societies supported by the Student Union, and so I raised the issue with the Student Union staff. The response was less than I had hoped for, and so when the Fresher’s Fair came around, the LGB stall was staffed by four gay men and a lesbian, all of us wearing khaki trousers and shirts and some very fetching red berets worn at a slightly jaunty angle. We raised a few smiles, a few nervous giggles. We raised the hackles on those standing at the OTC stall. But most of all we raised awareness and got people talking about an issue many people ignored because they felt it did not concern them. In all honesty, I had no real desire to join the Officer Training Corps, but that was not the point we were trying to make. The point was that neither my sexual orientation, my religious beliefs, my gender, nor the colour of my skin, should be an obstacle to my membership of any organisation supported by the Student Union of a university which supports inclusivity.

Of course there are other bakeries in Belfast, and I am sure some of them may well have been more than happy to bake the controversial cake, but again this is missing the point. If this Conscience Clause is permitted, how many other businesses owners will feel able to turn away those whose way of life does not conform to their beliefs. Bed and Breakfasts, supermarkets, florists, printers, barkeepers, undertakers – people who run these types of businesses will be able to fall back on this law as a defence to blatant discrimination if they choose to withdraw their goods or services for reasons of faith. Supporters of gay marriage will not be the only victims. Anyone whose way of life, or whose personal views, are at odds with the beliefs of the service provider could find themselves in a similar position.

There are still people who find the whole discussion pretty ridiculous. They hear others arguing over the rights and wrongs of baking a cake and they laugh off the entire argument. Back in 1995, when I was on my way home from the Fresher’s Fair in Bristol, I was surrounded at the end of my street by six people who found it necessary to wrap scarves around their faces before knocking me to the ground and using their fists and feet to show me what they thought of my way of life. As they spat expletives at me I recognised a couple of the voices as belonging to the young men who had explained to me the reasons for my not being welcome in their Student Union society.

We cannot afford to be myopic little optimists in these situations. Many state legislatures in America have already enacted or are thinking of enacting similar laws to the amendment proposed by Paul Givan. Rights and freedoms fought for over the course of decades are now at risk of being swept away. Those who know their history will be aware that in Germany, at the start of the 1930’s, a number of minor laws were introduced which prevented Jews from flying the national flag, and banning Jews from owning pets. For now I will not take this analogy any further. There will be some who might angrily challenge my comparison of the introduction of this Conscience Clause with early Nazi attempts to attack Jews. To them I say, I hope I am over-reacting. I hope this really is just a silly argument about baking a cake. I hope the vast majority of right thinking people in Northern Ireland would never consider refusing to serve me because of my way of life or my beliefs. I hope common sense can eventually find a way to get through. For over thirty years in this tiny corner of the United Kingdom people were killing each other out of hatred which was based on nothing more than religious beliefs and which piece of cloth you chose to pledge your allegiance to. I rest my case.