Christian bakers and marriage equality, why they were wrong to refuse to bake the cake.

A Christian bakery has recently come under fire for refusing to bake a cake for an LGBT couple which featured a pro marriage equality message. Defenders of the Christian bakery are saying the couple didn’t refuse the couple for being LGBT but because the cake featured a political message which went against their conscience. They are correct to an extent. I have seen too many people say the bakery refused to serve the couple because they were LGBT, this simply isn’t true. I believe the owners of the bakery when the say they denied service because of the political message on the cake. However, I do not believe this is an adequate reason not to serve the couple and it still constitutes discrimination.

The idea that a person shouldn’t be forced to make a product displaying a political message that goes against their conscience isn’t a controversial one. It makes sense, intuitively. However, marriage equality isn’t simply a political message, it’s about human rights and equality. If we allow bakers to refuse to bake cakes which display every form of political message that contravene their own mores then bakers should allowed to refuse to bake cakes depicting a free black man, a woman voting, an interracial couple, people of different races sharing the same seat on the bus. After all, each of these was once a political cause, and still is in some areas of the globe. However, if a baker did refuse to bake a cake on any of these grounds they would be met with a chorus of racism/sexism and defenders would be few and far between.

Some might argue that these are no longer political issues but that is simply moral relativism. If it is wrong today to refuse to bake a cake of an interracial couple because interracial marriage goes against your conscience, then it was wrong even before interracial marriage was legal.

Of course, those who will defend the bakers will say that marriage equality isn’t about equality and it’s different than the political cause listed above, but those who oppose the political causes listed above would say the same about those issues.

The defenders of the bakery try to obfuscate the issue by using the all-encompassing term “political cause” in a effort to make the actions of the bakers seem more reasonable and those who define their actions as discrimination as unreasonable. However, as you can see above, many basic human rights issues fall under the umbrella term of political cause. It is perfectly reasonable to discern between political causes which are solely political, and human rights issues which utilise the political process.

Refusing to bake a cake because you disagree with a political message is fine, refusing to bake a cake because it depicts or promotes equal human rights is not, it’s discrimination.