Christian couple Daniel and Amy McArthur, who run Belfast-based Ashers Baking Company, told activist Gareth Lee they would not make the cake featuring Sesame Street puppets and the logo of campaign group Queerspace.<\/p>\n
After a long-running legal battle over whether the McArthurs broke discrimination laws, five Supreme Court justices announced their decision in London on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
![\"Daniel](\"https:\/\/e3.365dm.com\/16\/10\/750x563\/ca95ee231030562956161fec884a220066fc76bc15a0fd4eeb4db08bbc71e70a_3816313.jpg?bypass-service-worker&20161024181901\")
<\/div>Delivering the ruling, Supreme Court president Lady Hale said the couple did not refuse to make the cake because of Mr Lee’s sexual orientation.\u00a0\u00a0She said: “Their objection was to the message on the cake, not to the personal characteristics of Mr Lee or anyone else with whom he was associated.<\/p>\n
“The bakers could not refuse to supply their goods to Mr Lee because he was a gay man or supported gay marriage, but that is quite different from obliging them to supply a cake iced with a message with which they profoundly disagreed.”<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/e3.365dm.com\/16\/10\/750x563\/cca4c394a96993b8cbee00066535c08c3488415cafa199300e8b377ec097425b_3815748.jpg?bypass-service-worker&20161024020623\")
<\/div><\/p>\n
Lady Hale said the ruling was not in any way to diminish the need to protect gay people and people who support gay marriage from discrimination.\u00a0 gay<\/p>\n
“It is deeply humiliating, and an affront to human dignity, to deny someone a service because of that person’s race, gender, disability, sexual orientation, religion or belief. But that is not what happened in this case,” she ruled.<\/p>\n
Mr Lee had previously won his case initially in the county court and then at the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Source\u00a0 \u00a0sky.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"