I have noted in an earlier piece why I am delighted, if a bit surprised, that Ashers bakery in Belfast has won its court case, allowing it not to be forced to bake cakes carrying political messages with which it disagrees, in the case in support of gay marriage. As the great Peter Tatchell showed, backing the Christian bakers does not make you a bigot just someone who believes in key civil liberties.
In my lifetime the dominant mores of our society have been transformed and, I should say, largely in a positive way. But who is to say what the next great changes will be. Would gay bakers really want to be forced to print cakes, I’d admit they would have to be very large cakes, citing how extreme interpretations of Sharia law should be applied to the LGBTI community? How would your local gay bakers feel about being asked to ice on the words of Leviticus Chapter 20 verse 13:
“If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them.”
I guess even my local, straight, bakers, being good lefties, might baulk at that one and quite right too. Why should a customer be able to ram their political views down the throat of any business? The Ashers case is about civil liberties as one of the greatest heroes of the gay rights movement Mr Peter Tatchell explains here.
But the BBC did not see it this way - the ruling went against the set group think agenda which is that "rights" of set groups get to trump civil liberties for all. As such its coverage was shocking. For starters it stated repeatedly that the decision was greeted with anger by the LGBT community. In fact many LGBT folks agreed with Tatchell while, I accept, many others disagreed with the ruling. But the BBC presented it as if the gay community was, at one, opposed to the judgement. That was simply fake news.
Then it turn across radio and TV to three vox pops from Ulster. The first was an obviously devout old buffoon who said that Jesus would have welcomed the decision. The other two were “supportive straights” who said it would hurt the feelings of the poor gays and that it was thus a bad thing. The clear message: only bigoted members of the one faith that the metropolitan liberal elitists of the BBC love to mock as old world, Irrelevant and ridiculous supported the bakers while the rest of Ulster were not bigots so opposed the ruling. According to the BBC there is no-one in Ulster who takes the very sensible Tatchell line on this matter.
Such coverage is as ludicrous as it is unbalanced. Yet we taxpayers face the threat of jail if we do not pay a license fee to support the very high salaries of those who churn such nonsense out on a daily basis. And the BBC wonders why it is not universally loved?