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THE WORKPLACE RELATIONS Commission (WRC) has ruled that a Co Dublin bakery did not discriminate against a man when refusing to bake a €700 cake with an anti-gay marriage message.
In May of last year, the man placed a cake order with the bakery with the words ‘BY THE GRACE OF THE GOOD LORD, I (name redacted), that in my honest opinion – “GAY MARRIAGE” IS A PERVERSION OF EQUALITY and the 34th Amendment to the Irish Constitution should be REPEALED’.
The man told the WRC hearing he was taking the action against the bakery under the Equal Status Act in response to a Belfast court case which had found that Ashers bakery had discriminated against a gay man when refusing to take an order a ‘Bert and Ernie’ cake with a pro-marriage equality message.
The man told the WRC hearing he placed the order for this cake both to test and “balance out” the Ashers bakery case.
He also told the hearing: “Why should the law favour people of a gay orientation and not deal with me the same way?” adding: “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”
The complainant stated that he is engaged in several litigation cases and has taken time off college to pursue these cases.
In response to the order, the bakery told the man it was extremely busy and had to close its order book for bespoke cakes.
As an alternative, it offered a “more simple version” of the order – that it would bake a cake but that an edible topping be made elsewhere, with a suggestion that an online search should be successful in this regard.
The man claimed the bakery had no intention of making a cake with the message he wanted and this amounted to unfair treatment and discrimination on religious grounds.
The complainant replied that the opening seven words, “By The Grace Of The Good Lord”, made it clear that he was expressing his religious beliefs.
The MD of the bakery wrote to the man to state that the company did not have the expertise to make the cake he requested and that its position was a commercial decision and it had offered an alternative solution he had chosen to ignore.
The letter concluded by stating that the complainant’s lengthy, oppressive and aggressive communications were a burden on the company’s resources and on staff morale. The complainant told the hearing he was not asking the bakery to endorse the cake message, just to make the cake.
He suggested that, if it wished, the bakery could have a disclaimer in the shop, or printed on the receipts or elsewhere, stating that it doesn’t endorse the messages that appear on its cakes.
The complainant said that if the bakery had difficulty producing the design he wanted, he was prepared to compromise and he had made this clear.
The complainant added that the cake was a means of fulfilling and manifesting his religious beliefs, and he intended to upload an image of it to his social media sites. After that he would probably eat it, he said.
Frivolous and vexatious
At this juncture, the bakery’s legal representatives stated that the complaint was frivolous and vexatious and should be dismissed. They also said the episode caused upset to the owners and employees of the small business.
The man claimed the bakery would not refuse to make a cake with a message for a gay couple celebrating their wedding, but that its refusal to do so in this case amounts to discrimination because of his religious beliefs and outlook.
At the hearing, the MD of the bakery said she did not know the complainant’s religion or religious persuasion at any stage before, during or after this incident.
In evidence, the MD said she had no difficulty with the wording. She stated that the order was very complicated in terms of the different colours and tone, the use of capital letters, the font, etc. Also, there were 49 words in the message – which was considerably above what would be the norm in any message.
She also said other orders were turned away at that time as the bakery’s order book for bespoke cakes was full and she could provide evidence of this.
The MD stated that the order would take as long to make as a wedding cake. She said the bakery had up to 140 cakes in the pipeline and that at 80 cakes they decide what can and cannot be done.
The legal representative for the bakery asked the complainant if he had the cake made elsewhere and he replied that he had not.
The MD said the cake would have taken eight hours to complete. In response to adjudication officer Ian Barrett asking if the cake’s wording was the real issue, the MD replied that the bakery didn’t get past the ability to see if the order was viable and it wasn’t.
In his ruling, Barrett said the complainant “must prove that he has been treated less favourably than another person because of his religious beliefs”.
“I do not believe that prima facie evidence was heard to prove that the Complainant’s order was refused because of his religious beliefs and/or that the Respondent refused to make this cake because the Complainant is a Christian,” he stated.
Barrett added: “Accordingly, the complaint fails.”
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Comments closed on everything today bar the most mundane.
@Daniel O’Neill: Oh,for peat’s sake
@Daniel O’Neill: they’ll probably delete this too
@Daniel O’Neill: And even when you do comment it will only allow the most vanilla of replies for fear of offending someone. The journal is all about its clicks but if this horse manure continues the people won’t comment for much longer and will just drift away from the site altogether.
@Gerry from the Block: nah.. It’s been like this for years.. People drift in and out but it always has some base.. Just a slow revolving door
Didn’t read the article, but as long as we harvest peat we are only kidding ourselves about sorting climate change.
@DERRY1973: climate change is the new stealth tax that keeps talking and at this stage is it is going to take the citizens of Ireland to the cleaners to no avail because the it’s population of the world is the problem and taxes don’t make any difference except to those in middle income because the are subsidised to have children and stay at home for a hand living
Keep it in the ground, both in and out of Ireland.
@Peadar Ó Rathaille: that’s how I’ll be voting at the next elections.
Absolutely zero joined up thinking here on Planet Ireland. Can’t burn the peat here, but can import it and also vast quantities of wood biomass from some cut out rainforest.
Growing medium is something cyclically harvested out of integrated constructed wetland systems, on every suitable small stream and river, primarily for the sequestration of carbon, phosphate, and nitrates, before all our waterways and near inshore zones are ruined by eutrophication. This is where the farming subsidies should be going.
The mega one for the central bogs though, is a couple of SMRs into each of the old peat power stations. Then the data centres. Then the waste heat of both to a massive complex of hydroponics, aeroponics, aquaponics, all pesticide free. Then the fly factories, their larvae eating a large part of our one million tonnes of food waste a year, before being fed to the salmon and chicken, with the rest of the bog area re engineered for sequestration.
Remember though we are dealing with Bord na Mona whose understanding of climate action was to stop using peat, but instead import wood biomass from Queensland.
@Nicholas Grubb: you would think the green party would be all over this sort of achievable biodiversity.
Apparently not.
Should the mushroom industry not have been researching alternatives before now as the cessation of peat harvesting has been widely flagged for years now? It can’t have come as a surprise.
Lorry loads of milled peat been sent to ports in Belfast to go to the rest of the UK is just wrong and a shame to see. It should be banned and strictly enforced
Since when were local council planners, an bord pleanala, and the EPA, competent judges / authorities / consultants?
@Archie Lochus: since never!!
I didn’t read the article so I don’t know if it said that a lot of the peat we export goes to the UK and then we buy the exact same peat back. Utter nonsense
An informative article but gets a bit bogged down in detail at times…
The production of the food that we eat, the food that sustains us, is being impeded, disparaged, and heckled at every level by the ultra-green lobby, who appear to think that they should be in complete control of what we eat and how it’s produced. Would absolute dictatorship be a realistic description of this mindset?
Irish peat for the Irish people
There was me wondering why we’re importing peat at all since we export the stuff. Then I had a look at the table: Northern Ireland peat would be considered an import. Fair enough. Second on the list: the Netherlands. Further away than Great Britain. “Peat it says here on the import papers. Nothin to see here. Let her through”.
Exporting bog
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