Ashers Bakery owners Amy and Daniel McArthur outside the Supreme Court in London, on Oct. 10, 2018. (Victoria Jones/PA via AP) LONDON (RNS) — On both sides of the Atlantic, a drama set in a bakery has pitted freedom of religion against LGBT civil rights and Exhibit A has been a wedding cake — or as it’s been colloquially dubbed here, a gay cake. This week it was the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom’s turn to decide a case, in which a Northern Ireland bakery refused to bake a cake and decorate it with a slogan supporting same-sex marriage. The result was the same as in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, decided in June, in which the U.S. Supreme Court found for the baker. The U.K. case began in 2014, when Ashers bakery, run by Daniel and Amy McArthur in Belfast, canceled an order to make a cake bearing the slogan “Support Gay Marriage” frosted on its top. The customer, a gay rights activist named Gareth Lee, had also asked for characters from “Sesame Street” and the logo of the activist group Queerspace. The McArthurs said that they could not provide the cake Lee wanted, citing their Christian beliefs […]
