DID you know that Bert and Ernie were a couple?
It’s amazing what can be learnt on a fair to middling July week in the throes
of the silly season.
For one particular middle-aged generation, Bert
and Ernie loomed large in their childhoods. The pair were staple characters in
Sesame Street, the great children’s television series of the 1970s.
They were an odd couple for kids, Ernie tall
and geeky, Bert short and cheeky. They were funny guys, whose banter included
the odd bit of education, which made the programme a winner across the
developed world.
Turns out the lads are gay icons. Maybe I’ve
led a sheltered life, but cursory research in the last few days has gleaned
that this has been so for some time. (Et tu, Big Bird?)
Anyway, the pair popped up in a controversy
over Christian cakes and gay marriage during the week.
Asher’s bakery in Co Antrim styles itself a
Christian bakery. Its name is taken from a verse in Genesis which says, “Bread
from Asher shall be rich and he shall yield royal dainties.” The company was
formed in 1992, has six outlets in the North, employs 62 people and is run with
a religious fervour.
“We are Christians and our Christianity reaches
to every point in out lives, whether that’s at home or in the day-to-day
running of the business,” the general manger Daniel McArthur told reporters
last week.
It’s an interesting concept. God knows, there’s
a distinct lack of Christianity in the increasing number of businesses that
believe it’s acceptable to pay less than a living wage to workers, but that’s
for another day.
Those who want to bring spiritual beliefs into
their work tend to get involved in areas like teaching, or communicating, or
dedicating themselves to helping people on the margins. Baking is not something
you might ordinarily associate with devotion to a higher power, unless every
order is regarded as a potential feast of Cana
But so what? We live in an allegedly tolerant
society, both here and north of the border, so whatever floats your boat should
be of no concern to anybody else.
God, and his offspring, do carry some baggage
when they turn up in the workplace. What, for example, if the best baker
between here and Rome applied for a job in Asher’s, but confessed that he was a
strict adherent of Buddhism? Would it be legitimate to discriminate against him
based on his beliefs? Surely not. No defence could be advanced that the fruits
of his labour would be inferior because they were baked with hands that knew
not Christ.
The current matter concerning Asher’s involved
alleged discrimination, not of a potential employee, but of a cake. The bakery
received an order its management felt unable to fulfil as it was contrary to
the company’s ethos.
A cake was requested with specifications that
it include images of Bert and Ernie with their arms around each other, and a
printing of the slogan “Support Gay Marriage”, along with a logo for a Belfast
based gay, bisexual and transgender organisation.
Asher’s said no can do.
“We thought that this order was at odds with
our beliefs, it certainly was in contradiction with what the Bible teaches,” Mr
McArhur said last week.
Get up the yard, said Northern Ireland’s
Equality Commission.
It confirmed that it had received a complaint
from the party who placed the order, and it has written to Asher’s. The bakery
could face prosecution for allegedly being in breach of the Equality Act, which
deals with the provision of goods and services.
“In this case the commission has granted
assistance to the complainant, and has written to the company concerned on his
behalf,” a commission statement read.
“The commission will consider any response
before taking further action.”
The first matter arising is why the order was
placed with Asher’s. Of all the bakeries, in all the towns, across all the
North, and this supporter of gay marriage had to walk into the one who rejects
the whole concept of Adam and Steve.
Is it that Asher’s has an unrivalled reputation
for producing scrumptious products? Or was somebody just looking for a fight?
Then, there is the subject matter. The bakery
refused to construct a slogan supporting gay marriage. What if the request was
to impose words like “Support abortion services”? Would refusal to do so
constitute possible discrimination against those who are pro-choice?
The commission’s position would infer that it
believes it is now discriminatory to oppose gay marriage. Logically, this
infers that those opposed to legalising the union are homophobic. Is that fair?
Like it or not, there are those who adhere to a
strict interpretation of their religious beliefs which includes the tenet that
sex should only be engaged between a heterosexual couple married in the Church.
Ok, in today’s world that sounds bonkers to
most of us. Practicalities have ensured that the vast majority who harbour
those beliefs have given up the ghost on trying to steer society away from
pre-marital sex.
In fact, it is quite obvious that most of the
strict adherents see gay marriage as the last outpost on which to have their
beliefs superimposed on society at large.
Opinion polls show that they are out of step
with the majority of the public, who are in favour of gay marriage.
At this stage of the evolution of human rights,
it would appear to many among us to be common sense to legislate for it.
Yet, what now appears to be popping up in
incidents like the gay cake is a level of intolerance for anybody who still
opposes the move. Debate around the Pantigate controversy hit a similar theme.
The intolerance that once targeted people over their sexuality is now being
exercised, in some quarters, against those who have taken a stand based on
their religious beliefs.
Some of this can be attributed to the natural
order of a backlash.
Gay people were the subject of appalling
treatment down through the years. That intolerance of diversity is even now not
fully eradicated. The sex-obsessed prerogative of the Catholic Church in this
country exacerbated the discrimination.
Now that the tide has gone out on the Church’s
influence, and with the rapid colonisation of middle ground opinion in favour
of gay marriage, intolerance to any opposition is a growing danger.
Asher’s bakery should not be subjected to
threats from a commission allegedly concerned with equality. Taking the company
on for refusing to bake a cake with what is a political slogan does a
disservice to fighting discrimination in all its guises.
South of the border, it would be a mistake for
gay marriage campaigners to allow intolerance against opponents to fester. In
what is still a largely conservative society, middle ground opinion is fickle.
A referendum on the issue is pencilled in for
next year, and the graveyard of defeated amendment campaigns is littered with
the hubris of those who believed it was gong to be a cakewalk.
Let’s be careful out there.
Michael Clifford
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