The Case Of The Cake

I had assumed this story had died years ago, but apparently it’s back again.

In a weekly newspaper, just above serious stories about the United Nations urging the Saudi coalition in Yemen to stop occupying ports, and about Amnesty International’s report on war crimes in Syria, was the latest instalment in a court case about a wedding cake. 

As you may possibly recall, about six years ago, a couple in America who were getting married, asked a cake shop to bake a wedding cake for them.  The baker decided he didn’t want to.  The couple decided that this constituted an infringement of their civil right to have a wedding cake baked for them.  The baker decided that this constituted an infringement of his right to refuse to bake for people he disapproved of.  Six years later, the case has gone as far as the US Supreme Court, who have recently ruled in favour of the baker and against the Colorado Civil Rights Commission.

Okay, possibly this story sounded less inflammatory because I left out the words ‘gay’ and ‘Christian’.  Possibly, given that news coverage has centred on whether the rights of fundamentalist Christians trump (so to speak) the rights of gay people, I should consider my own biases:

1.                  I am a Christian.

2.                  My friends include gay Christians, bisexual Christians, and transsexual Christians, many of whom would like to get married in church.

3.                  My friends also include heterosexual, traditionalist Christians who don’t like the idea of gay couples getting married at all, let alone in church.

4.                  I am recently married, and extremely happy.  When I read an interview with the couple at the centre of this case, Charlie Craig and David Mullins, describing how they had been cuddling on their couch when they decided to get married, it reminded me of how my boyfriend had proposed to me during a sofa-cuddle in very similar circumstances.  I definitely hope that, in the midst of all this legal wrangling, Craig and Mullins have had as much time as we have to enjoy cuddling, kissing and tickling, and the delighted astonishment of having found true love.

Nonetheless, my main response to this case is: ‘Why does it matter?’  After all, if you’re preparing for a special occasion like getting married, why would you want to buy a cake from someone who disapproves of you?  Wouldn’t a lovingly baked home-made cake be a far happier way to celebrate your love?

At our wedding, I’d certainly have been happy to bake our wedding cake or ask my mum to do it, but friends of ours (pictured below) run a tea-room that serves delicious cakes, where we had often had lunch with my boyfriend’s father and brother, so it seemed sensible to ask them to make our cake.  Our main problem was different guests’ tastes and allergies, so we had to choose a different flavour for each tier: one fruit-cake, one chocolate, and one coffee-and-walnut.

Of course, to Craig and Mullins, this case isn’t about cake, but about the right to equality.  But most of us have been refused service at one time or another, and just accept that someone who doesn’t want to do business with you is someone who doesn’t deserve your money.

 My parents chuckle as they describe how, as a young couple hiking on Dartmoor, they were rejected at one pub for being too scruffy, and at another for being too respectable and obviously tourists rather than local farmers.  They just walked on, until they found the cosy welcome of the Warren House Inn.  A Scottish friend of my father was thrown out of a pub for wearing his family tartan, as his clan had fought with the local clan several hundred years earlier. 

A friend and I (both in our thirties) were refused service at a pub in Eastleigh because we couldn’t prove we were over eighteen, and we weren’t even trying to buy alcohol, only tea or coffee.  I suspect that the pub’s preferred clientele were people who were only just eighteen, and therefore routinely carried ID to prove it, rather than thirty-somethings who no longer bothered.  At any rate, in the next street we found a delightful late-night coffee-house that served delicious hot chocolate and played Leonard Cohen records, which made for a much pleasanter end to the evening.

Of course, some people are barred for a reason...

For Jack Phillips, the baker at the Masterpiece Cakeshop, I expect the case isn’t about cake either, but about the right to express his interpretation of the Bible: specifically, his belief that same-sex relationships are sinful.  But why should he assume he has to police the morals of his customers? 

As one satirical comment on a discussion forum put it: ‘Sure, Christian bakers should refuse to bake cakes for gay weddings.  They should also refuse to bake for anyone who eats lobster, wears mixed fabrics, or plants onions and carrots in the same vegetable-patch.’  All these are forbidden in the same section of Leviticus as same-sex relationships.  Yet people who accept that most of Leviticus’s prohibitions simply reflect Jewish culture at that time, assume that anything it says about sex is an absolute moral law.

Mr Phillips may feel that prioritising gay rights against religious rights discriminates against Christians.  But there are many countries where Christians face real discrimination and persecution: where you can be imprisoned or killed just for reading the Bible or going to church.  There are also many countries where you can be imprisoned or killed for being gay.  Sometimes they are even the same countries.

I want to feel superior to all the people involved in this case.  Then I remember all the trivial things I’ve got ridiculously upset or angry about in the past week.  I may not have taken out a legal suit about any of them, but I am as prone as anyone to, as Georgette Heyer’s characters would put it, making a cake of myself.