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. 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 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. 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 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 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. In response to the order, the bakery told the man it was extremely busy and had to close its order book for bespoke cakes.Īs 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 complainant stated that he is engaged in several litigation cases and has taken time off college to pursue these cases. 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 man told the WRC hearing he placed the order for this cake both to test and “balance out” the Ashers bakery case. 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. 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honest opinion – “GAY MARRIAGE” IS A PERVERSION OF EQUALITY and the 34th Amendment to the Irish Constitution should be REPEALED’.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 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.