A queer state of affairs
Let me make it clear from the outset that I couldn't give a damn about people's sexual preferences.
I couldn't care less if a person prefers their own gender, or dresses as the opposite gender or is even in the process of becoming the opposite gender. I do despise the word "gay" but that is simply because it is the hi-jacking of a perfectly harmless word and using it to describe a section of society and making them sound like they are permanently high on pot.
I do also object to the possibility of chatting up some gorgeous female, and then when going for a grope finding a set of tackle that definitely is not female, but that's beside the point [as it were].
Sexual preference is like religion – I don't give a flying fuck what you are into, provided you don't expect me to join in.
So what am I on about, you ask?
A bakery in Norn Iron is being hauled over the coals for refusing to bake a cake proclaiming support for gay marriage.
I am solidly and 100% behind the bakery's decision.
Why?
Because that bakery is a private business and it is entirely their prerogative to refuse any customer they so wish for any or no reason.
I don't give a shite that the bakery owners are Christians or that the order was blatantly pro-homosexual. Both factors are irrelevant. The core of the matter is that a shop owner decided to turn away a customer and that is entirely his or her own right. It is certainly not the business of the Equality Commission. It is not the business of lawyers nor is it anything to do with politicians. It is none of their fucking business.
But of course in this nauseatingly politically correct world , everyone is jumping up and down and screaming discrimination. When the customer was refused, he should simply have gone to another shop, but no – he has to go whinging and whining to the Equality Commission who equally should have given him a list of alternative bakeries and told him to grow a pair.
As the Christian Institute's director says –
"It establishes a dangerous precedent about the power of the state over an individual or business to force them to go against their deeply-held beliefs."
Bang on.
No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs
Try next door?
Remember always remember that tolerance is only ever extended to the groups the government tells you to tolerate if your beliefs do not coincide with that bestowed from the great progressive leaders then you will see just how "tolerant" our society is
This has already happened here. The bakery eventually lost its case. Actually this happened twice once in Oregon and once in Colorado. Unfortunately both cases were called discrimination and the bakeries had to either bake a cake for the fags or pay fines. Personally I would have paid the fines.
pfft… I'd not want to eat the cake if they are forced to bake one
Heh! Yes, a very salient point!
I'm all for eating christian cake, buddhist cake, yiddish gefillte fish, Quaker oats and agnostic curranty crumpets – as long as I choose to munch them and they are not shoved down my throat by some scripture-thumping control freak. As for the christian bakers in Belfast: they can have their cake and eat it allelulia. If Adam and Steve want a special wedding cake, one of them in the partnership has got to learn to be a good housekeeper and know how to mix an egg into a packet of self-raising flour, stir in milk, dried fruit, cinnamon and other ingredients and bung the lot in the oven.
I wonder what they wanted the cake for? It looks like an advert to me.
Afternoon tea at the LGBT association meeting perhaps, but that would be preaching to the converted.
The whole raison d'être of the cake was, I suspect, to create this very situation so they could force their personal lifestyle choices on people who they knew very well did not agree with them. The same thing happened in England with that B&B who refused a double room to a gay couple on the grounds of their Christian beliefs. One of the gays turned out to be a 'Stonewall' (gay rights group) activist. They took the B&B to court for discrimination and won, of course. It's simply malicious entrapment to further their 'gay rights' agenda.
PS. I left a reply for you in comments here:
http://headrambles.com/2014/07/02/shooting-the-moon/#comments
but it's a bit of an old post, so you may not have seen it. Grandad is trying to capitalise on it of course, as is his wont, but perhaps he's never tried getting blood out of a stone before.
Thanks. Have replied on that thread.
It's discrimination and should not be tolerated
a privately run business can do what they want to, corporate one, not so much. I agree the bakery is discriminating, however, is the couple picking a known religious family bakery to prove a point? streets run both ways.
If they provide a service to the public they have to provide it to all members of the public. Doesn't matter if the paying customer sought their services to prove a point or not.
Hard to believe they're turning down paying customers in this day and age but they need to learn to leave their religious beliefs at home
Not correct. They are a private business who are there to make a profit by selling goods. How they go about running that business is their affair and theirs alone. If they decide to turn down business for any [or no] reason then it's their own profits that are hurt, but it is still their right to do so.
If they were providing a service and were funded by the public purse then discrimination may well come into play, but baking cakes is not a service – it's a trade.
The blatantly unfair point about all this is that if the bakery had told them that they were unable to fulfill the order because of for the date specified because of too great a work load or change of supplier there would have been no upset. Because the general manager refused of religious grounds he allowed the complainent to go after him with a technical breach of the law. I notice these people pick on Christians because they are honest and are easy targets for persecution. These gay rights activists and the judges who now show no compassion when making their judgments are beneath contempt as far as any just and tolerant civilized society is concerned.
"Easy targets for persecution" Seriously? The only persecution here is of the Customer who was denied service.
"These gay rights activists and the judges who now show no compassion when making their judgments are beneath contempt"
Just how does that fit in with your "just and tolerant civilized society" There was no tolerance shown by this bakery.
I spoke about this case case with my three teenage muses yesterday.I outlined the basic story and asked what they thought.My sons were puzzled,my daughter (one of her best friends is lesbian) said "that's bullshit,the guy that ordered that cake was deliberately stirring the shit knowing he was going to get that response from that bakery."
My immediate reaction on reading this was that the whole thing was a set-up. When they ordered the cake they knew damn well what would happen, and it's just a cheap and nasty way to get publicity.
Personally, if I had been the shopkeeper I would have filled the order but would have misspelled the "slogan" or something ["Grey marriage"??]. They get their money back, but what the hell. Either that or I would have added a few ingredients of my own, such as a combination of laxatives and purgatives?
However the fact still remains that it's the law that's at fault here. It is a law that is just begging to be abused.
Doesn't matter if it was a set up to get cheap publicity. Fact remains that this bakery discriminated against a paying customer because they didn't approve of their lifestyle.
and I maintain it is perfectly within their rights to do so.
If I open a shop, I am paying for the premises, buying the stock and providing my labour, not as a public service but as a private means of generating trade and therefore profit. If I decide to confine my trade solely to people under four foot in height and over the age of fifty then I am not going to generate much business but it is my right to do so. It is my private business and I can do as I wish with it. If twenty year old six-footer starts screaming discrimination, then that's his problem and not mine.
So refusing that cake order may have been bad business practice but in no way is it discrimination.
dessigee. Were you born a c*nt or do you try hard? I run a business. If someone turns up with a piece of shite that I do not want to work on I refuse, simple. I have that right. Some things/clients just are not worth the bother. This particular case was another Stonewall/Gay mafia set up, there are plenty of other bakeries who would take on the order but because this particular bakery refused on a matter of conscience, feigned offense and an extremely puerile and vindictive attitudes prevailed and an excuse was found to vent a faux grievance. How about trying to intergrate into the real world where a very large number of people find these hystrionics extremely irritating.
I agree 100% with Grandad, even about the high jacking of the word "gay". Queer is quite ok, or even peculiar because that describes the condition. The word "straight" has also been high jacked and for some queer people and the gobshite media, particularly television, it means something that it doesn't mean to me. As for "gay pride", what the hell is that supposed to mean. I agree fully with the decision of the bakery to refuse to bake a cake with a political slogan it didn't agree with. It has nothing to do with the Equality Commissioner either, unless the bakery has no right to refuse to serve customers. As for providing a service, yes, the bakery may well be providing a service and supplying goods, but the motive for that is simply profit. Any maybe they might like baking too, That's ok. Now, Eve and Steve who ordered the political slogan cake should be told to go and f+ck off and the media reporting on it to show more drivel about Garth Brooks and the toys he's thrown out of his pram. The things that get media attention these days!!! It proves my belief that the media is absolutely useless.