Not for the first time, I must praise Peter Tatchell, the militant campaigner for the rights of homosexuals, for his courage and honesty. Mr Tatchell was badly beaten some years ago in an attempt to protest against Robert Mugabe’s policies, an act which required considerable physical bravery. And he took part willingly in a Channel Four programme I made some years ago about increasing threats to freedom of speech, criticising police for heavy handed treatment of a couple who had expressed unfashionable views about homosexuality. Mr Tatchell loathed what the couple had said. yet he defended them. He understood the basic principle of liberty, that you can defend someone’s freedom to say something you don’t like.

So many campaigners for the fashionable causes of the Left simply don’t get this, but Mr Tatchell does, and his good example deserves our praise.

Now he has publicly changed his mind on the case of the ‘Gay Cake’ (this affair is explained at length below)

Mr Tatchell says:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/01/gay-cake-row-i-changed-my-mind-ashers-bakery-freedom-of-conscience-religion

His key words are: ‘… the court erred by ruling that Lee was discriminated against because of his sexual orientation and political opinions. His cake request was refused not because he was gay, but because of the message he asked for.’

He also goes to the heart of the matter when he says : ‘This finding of political discrimination against Lee sets a worrying precedent. Northern Ireland’s laws against discrimination on the grounds of political opinion were framed in the context of decades of conflict. They were designed to heal the sectarian divide by preventing the denial of jobs, housing and services to people because of their politics. There was never an intention that this law should compel people to promote political ideas with which they disagreed.’

And he rightly issues this warning about the implications of the judgement: ‘The judge concluded that service providers are required to facilitate any “lawful” message, even if they have a conscientious objection. This raises the question: should Muslim printers be obliged to publish cartoons of Mohammed? Or Jewish ones publish the words of a Holocaust denier? Or gay bakers accept orders for cakes with homophobic slurs? If the Ashers verdict stands it could, for example, encourage far-right extremists to demand that bakeries and other service providers facilitate the promotion of anti-migrant and anti-Muslim opinions. It would leave businesses unable to refuse to decorate cakes or print posters with bigoted messages. In my view, it is an infringement of freedom to require businesses to aid the promotion of ideas to which they conscientiously object. Discrimination against people should be unlawful, but not against ideas.’

I agree wholeheartedly, and made a similar point some time ago(see the end of this article).

Most of you will know that a bakery in Northern Ireland, owned and run by Christians, was taken to court by Gareth Lee, with the assistance of the Northern Ireland ‘Equality Commission’ for refusing to bake a cake iced with (among other things) a contentious statement of opinion, namely ‘Support Gay Marriage’ .

Here’s an approving summary of the judgement by Joshua Rozenberg (who I cannot resist mentioning here is married to Melanie Phillips, the commentator for ‘The Times’ and panellist on ‘The Moral Maze’ on BBC Radio 4, who many people think of as a conservative, but who is (or at least was) inclined to insist that she is really a liberal distressed by the views of her fellow-liberals).

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/20/gay-cake-ruling-equality-northern-ireland

I think Mr Rozenberg is too happy about this . The Judge’s view that ‘the correct comparison would have been with a heterosexual person ordering a cake that said “support heterosexual marriage”’is gravely mistaken. The comparison would be with an openly and actively sexual liberationist baker being asked to bake a cake which said ‘Gay marriage is wrong’ or ‘Gay sex is sinful’. I would absolutely support such a baker’s freedom to refuse such an order.

I’ve always thought the court’s attitude was plain silly. The bakers say they didn’t know (which can’t be proved) or care (which could be proved easily by the same person asking them to bake a cake without any contentious message on it) about the sexuality of the person giving the order, and would have baked him a cake, as such, without hesitation.

https://www.courtsni.gov.uk/en-GB/Judicial%20Decisions/SummaryJudgments/Documents/Court%20Delivers%20Judgment%20in%20Ashers%20Bakery%20Case/j_j_Summary%20of%20judgment%20-%20Ashers%20Bakery.htm

The full judgement is here for those interested

http://www.courtsni.gov.uk/en-GB/Judicial%20Decisions/PublishedByYear/Documents/2015/[2015]%20NICty%202/j_j_2015NICty2Final.htm

There’s a curious passage in this (which I think Mr Rozenberg doesn‘t get quite right when he says ‘Brownlie found that Ashers must have known that Lee was gay.’) . The official case report says: ‘ it must have been abundantly clear during those discussions that the plaintiff supported gay marriage and that in all the circumstances the 2nd defendant must either consciously or unconsciously have had the knowledge or perception that the plaintiff was gay and/or was associated with others who are gay.’

Well, yes, indeed, but it is quite possible to support the causes of homosexual equality without being homosexual. Next, this does not give any reason to assume that, even if the person involved was himself homosexual, this fact influenced the bakers’ decision. Our knowledge, especially our unconscious knowledge, must not be assumed to have led us into an act of unfairness unless this has been proved by other means. I should have thought the only proof of this would have been a refusal by Ashers to bake a cake, without any message on it, ordered by someone whom they knew to be homosexual. If there is any evidence of Ashers having done this, I have not seen or heard of it.

That would surely need to be proven in other ways before anyone could assert it. In which event, the case revolves not around the fair treatment of homosexuals, which the law plainly requires – but about the freedom to decline to publish or endorse opinions with which we disagree, which is fundamental to freedom of speech and the press.

Imagine if ‘The Guardian’ could be forced by law to publish a column by me. If you think that ludicrous, then you must say the same of this judgement, with its wholly mistaken concentration on the sale of the cake, and its apparent inability to see the role of the bakers as publishers. How many cakes bearing contentious messages about controversial issues, I wonder, are ordered in UK bakers in any given year?

I strongly believe that the complainant could easily have found other bakers willing to bake the required cake with the required declaration, so it is hard to cast Ashers (who as far as I know make their conservative Christian position publicly clear) in the role of censors. This could only be the case if they held a total monopoly of cake-baking which they certainly do not. The issue was about one person being forced to endorse in public an opinion which he did not support.

The proposed cake took the form of sponge topped with sugar, but it was for legal purposes a poster or placard in the form of a cake, which Ashers were being required to print and publish, albeit in the form of sugar.

If the law can compel any printer or publisher or indeed any person, to print and publish sentiments with which he or she does not agree, then an important liberty is at an end. For this purpose, Ashers were a publisher.

In some ways it is even more important than the freedom to say what you want. Authoritarian societies, which are bad, silence opposition. This is evil, but still leaves people able to maintain private independence without having to make public self-abasements. Totalitarian societies, which are worse, require their citizens to shout and speak and sing slogans supporting their rulers, and to display flags on their homes endorsing those rulers. I have seen this done. It makes the flesh creep. Such requirements eat at the soul. I have always remembered Christabel Bielenberg’s trick (recounted in her book about living as an Englishwoman married to a German in the Hitler state, ‘The Past is Myself’) for avoiding saying ‘Heil Hitler’. She would say ‘Drei Liter!’ (‘Three Litres!’) so emphatically and with such feeling that nobody noticed. Those who read the account many years later may have smiled, but I always thought it a very serious matter. This is how you remain free inside.

As I wrote here in July 2014: ‘I don’t care about same-sex marriage. It doesn’t matter. It’s the collapse of heterosexual marriage that’s important. But it does matter when triumphalist sexual revolutionaries force their opponents to act against their consciences. So please note this bit of the row about the Belfast Christian bakers who declined to bake a gay-themed cake, whose icing would have proclaimed support for same-sex nuptials. Another baker, by the way, happily complied with the order.

But that’s not enough. The Christian bakers may now be pursued through the courts. I cannot see how this can be called a free country if the law has any say in such matters. If you can be forced by law to publish a view you disagree with on a cake, then presumably you can be forced to do so in a book, a newspaper or a TV programme.’

Mr Tatchell is right. The judgement was mistaken.