It’s just a £35 cake – not a battleground for gay rights

The moral dilemmas presented by the commissioning of this baked product are profound indeed

Ashers Baking Company refused to make a cake supporting same-sex marriage

The “gay cake” in Northern Ireland story has its absurdist aspects, no doubt. How could it not when it features Bert and Ernie, heroes of Sesame Street, and speculation about the sexual preferences of what are, after all, some lumps of fuzzy felt.

And yet the moral dilemmas presented by the commissioning of this £35 baked product are profound indeed. Unlikely as it may be, it is at a baker’s shop in Belfast where conflicting human rights have collided.

First, the rights of the gay couple who were discriminated against, according to the courts, when a firm of bakers refused to make their wedding cake for them. The bakers objected to the slogan “support gay marriage” – which was to be iced on alongside an image of the two Muppets and the logo of the QueerSpace organisation, a group that works with lesbian, gay and bisexual people in Northern Ireland, where bigotry against them has been widespread in the past.

How to balance their rights against those of the bakers, whose Christian religious beliefs were so strong they could not fulfil the order? They, and a Christian organisation supporting them, are now taking their case to appeal (it has been adjourned for the time being), at yet more expense in time and money.

The cost of this £35 cake could eventually top £1m. In cases such as this we should turn to the gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, whose wisdom in such situations – born, as it is, of the harshest of experiences – is invaluable. As he says, we cannot want to create a society where bakers are compelled to make doughnuts, buns and cakes with any “lawful” message, even if they have a conscientious objection.

Should Muslim bakers be obliged to publish cartoons of Mohamed? Or Jewish ones publish the words of a Holocaust denier? Or gay bakers accept orders for cakes with homophobic slurs? Of course not.

Time, perhaps, then, to put the gay cake back in the oven.