Gay cake row.

Who'd have thought a bit of cake could cause so much fuss?

 

My favourite time. The witching hour when all ghouls come out to play. Anyway, surely you'd agree that the place has been a bit quiet recently and needed livening up a bit!

 

OK mate fair enough. What you need to know at this point is this. I would have helped defend your mates too in any situation as I did once before. I wasn't being serious about walking away. Not my style. I thought you'd have realised that as the thread developed and what I was meaning was that having done that and defending anybody's right to be in a minority and express themselves as they see fit, I get a bit fed up being told how I should 'feel' as well.

Your sexuality is about how you feel. So's mine. It's got absolutely nothing to do with tolerance and standing up for the rights of minorities which it would seem we both do. It's an entirely different thing altogether. I hope that's cleared things up a bit.

 

Okay Kelso fair enough, just don't like homophobia, appreciate your honesty, lets leave it there.

 

Ta. But a pity to leave it there just when it was getting interesting! What I'd like to know is this. Does the story I related back at #48 make me a homophobe? Are the bakers necessarily homophobes? There are those on here who seem to think yes to both and those who seem to be saying no. Those I related my story to at the time mostly thought yes (perhaps not surprising given the company) but not all of them. I of course say no! It's not about feelings. It's about the tolerance (and sometimes the support of) difference which is the important thing.

My story was of course one of brutal honesty. Perhaps I was a bit o.t.t. But if I just wanted a quiet life I guess I'd keep my mouth shut more often! In the long run I don't reckon anyone gets anywhere unless people are able to be totally honest and open. Sweeping things under the carpet simply stacks up problems for a later date.

 

Good god!!.... i don't know about you but I need a bit of shuteye, 1 hours sleep last night! I need someone to proxy for me in the debate while I'm out for the count...

 

Sorry to hear about your experiences StAlbans - didn't think that stuff happened anymore.

 

Great minds! My sleep pattern is pretty weird at the moment too and I was going to say exactly the same thing now the graveyard shift has finished! Luckily I don't have much to do today (my Mum's birthday - flowers dispatched) so am gonna have a kip too. T.b.c. this evening then!

 

Thanks Jumbolina appreciate it Yeah it still does I'm afraid and often where you would least expect it tbh, it's the little things too, remember one time not long ago, walking down Tottenham Court Road in London after night out, held hands with boyfriend, thought might be okay given area, while walking past all the electrical stores (don't know if you know it, top end near Soho), 1 minute in guy slows down in car girl leans out the window with mate and spits at us and shouts homophobic abuse, its still goes on, it is better now I'd say and people are generally more tolerant. You shouldn't have to, but you do get used to it. Still genuinely does shock me that there are no openly gay players in the football league, it really is an indictment of football which I so love, (I think Watford FC to be fair are better than most).

 

Tolerance should work both ways, otherwise it's not tolerance at all. The activist behind this stunt has not furthered acceptance of homosexually, and the judge's ruling has actually fuelled a lot of resentment from people who don't like the law holding a gun to our heads and telling us how to think.

I support your right to be with whoever makes you happy, to get married, to walk down the street holding hands etc. I also support the right of that baker to refuse to make a cake with a picture on it that offends his beliefs.

I don't particularly like his beliefs, but likewise, I don't like the spiteful and downright fascist attitudes of certain left-leaning people.

 

IMO most if not all stunts by gay activist are merely attempts to bring out the ugliness of homophobia for all to see. Seems like a reasonable strategy really.

 

You're a gay cake

 

This.

I wouldn't discriminate a person based on their sexuality as in not bake him a cake or abuse him etc.

But do I agree with homosexuality? Not really, does it make me feel uncomfortable? Yes. Would I be upset if my son come out gay? Yes.

But it seems like you have to agree with it nowadays or you're called a bigot. I think it's perfectly cool to not agree with it but it's not cool to discriminate based on it

 

There seem to be more sides to this argument than I thought.

To make it clear, I'm utterly in favour of gay rights. I think that love should be embraced, in all forms and any arguments about nature or religion are just tools used by bigots to mask their ignorance.

However, I also support people's right to be ignorant. However much I think that the baker is a total bell end for his beliefs, it is not my place or anyone else's, in my opinion to use the law to tell him that they are wrong. Sure, gay activists could protest outside his shop and let other people know that he won't bake gay cakes, but I don't believe the law should force people to bake cakes against their will, even if that's their job.

In a free democracy, it is a free choice for his gay and gay supporting customers to get their gluten-based products from elsewhere, if they find out that his way of doing things is against their principles.

The gay person has the freedom to get their cake from elsewhere without any issue. It is the right of the businessman to take on jobs that suit him, whatever his personanal reasons. Nobody should be forced to trade with anyone else, regardless of how misguided their reasoning for choosing not to.

 

What would be wrong then with a 'No Blacks, no Irish' sign? It's just the landlord's 'beliefs'.

 

What if no baker in town will bake you one?

 

Bake your own :doh:

 

Sigh. Just imagine it's a service more important than a cake. Or imagine you have no arms or something, whatever it takes.

 

To be fair, a women just cheated on me and broke my heart.

The next time I see a woman being attacked by a group, I certainly won’t cross the road to help out.

I mentioned to another women that their gender are all wh*res and repulse me, and she had the audacity to tell me to use more polite language and not stereotype.

Can you believe her audacity??

 

Seems like homophobia has suddenly come into fashion in this thread. Fair enough they have the right to believe what they want, but the rest of us have the right to consider you absolute ****s of the highest order.

I'm fairly certain there will be gay forum members here who have had to put up with this **** their whole lives. They last thing they want is some idiots on a football forum reserving their right to spread their ignorant medieval bull**** around making them feel unwelcome here.

 

Agreed 100%.

TBH I can't tell who's being serious & who's being ironic on this thread anymore so I'm off.

I would say "I'm out" but I'd better not.

 

Has it? What is this post actually saying? Not much at all it would seem to me. Who's it directed at? What is your definition of homophobia? Until it's defined any discussion is frankly pointless.

 

He's entitled to his beliefs, no matter how ridiculous they are, and people are entitled not to support his business if he's going to be an arse about things. If you were one of the targetted minorities on such a sign, why on Earth would you want the law to force him to let you support his business?

If a landlord told me he hated Watford and would rather that Watford fans didn't drink in his pub, he wouldn't need a sign saying 'No Watford Fans', because I wouldn't want to give him my money anyway.

 

Recipe for a free for all.

 

OK. For what it's worth here's my take on the whole thing:

There's a line called 'human sexuality'. Everyone is a dot on the line. At one end called 'heterosexual' there's a big cluster of dots. At the other end called 'homosexual' there's a smaller cluster of dots. But once your sample size is big enough then every point on the line is occupied by at least one dot. There are no gaps and quite a few of the dots are right in the middle. Now, for the two extreme clusters (the majority), their sexuality is entirely determined by nature but for those in the middle (a much smaller number) nurture has a part to play too. Then there is a small group that we might call 'bohemians' who like to make a spectacle of themselves and often call themselves bi. Look at me. So how does that sound? miked2006 - close to your field?

Now organised religion refuses to believe in the nature element at all. That would recognise that God has a role to play in gay people being gay and we can't have that now can we? For them it's all down to nurture, sinning and being influenced by sinners. That makes the process reversible in their eyes in all cases. Of course this is total b.llocks. Their big problem is in believing their books are the handed down word of God rather than simply an interpretation of the real world as their scholars understood it at the time (poorly) and when there were a lot more bigots around. That's why most religious types continue to make such arses of themselves.

As to my particular predicament regarding the camp, gay male group (about eight I think). Well firstly, if you can't understand the distinction between a visceral reaction and an intellectual argument (fan) then you really do need to engage your brain before you let your fingers do the walking. But I reckon it was to do with these two things (both of which would come under the broader classification of 'finding myself out of my comfort zone').

1- It was an overt 'in your face' sexuality that I didn't understand. OK - I know I don't have to understand it, just be tolerant of the difference, but at the time it was kinda hard to ignore

2- I found myself in a minority which was unusual. I'm used to being in a majority as I guess all heterosexuals are. That's the way the world has always worked for me and I know all the rules of engagement in mixed, heterosexual company. This was different and consequently unnerving and I simply wanted to run away back to my comfort zone which was what I did (twice). Which leads me on to:

The points made surrounding gay people nearly always being in a minority are well made. When I was in a minority I didn't like it. So maybe gays don't like it nearly all the time either. It's hard to put yourself in another's position but I do get that and am doing my best.

 

It's not too late to convert

 

I was meant to post this and you have since replied and kind of clarified things, but here is what I was going to say.

Do you think that the Civil Rights Laws in the US 1960's did not influence a change of opinion for black rights in the US? It was probably one of the most important laws made in US history.

Laws are an incredibly effectual way of changing public opinion. It isn't just there to tell us what to do and how to think. It is a framework for what is expected of you as a citizen. It is very easy to hold a belief, but when it conflicts with the law, having to justify it is far more difficult. Being able to take someone to court who is denying you the right to live like any other citizen is an incredible right, that should not be taken for granted.

It really wasn’t too long ago that a shopkeeper could refuse to serve somebody because they found somebodies skin colour vile. Now, there would quite rightly be outrage. I don’t ideologically believe that the government should tell people how to think, but they speed up a very slow multiple-generational process of acceptance, for which the benefits outweigh the costs.

Since laws have ‘told people how to act’, equality is taught in schools, and future generations are growing up in increasingly tolerant societies, aided by rights activists like this who hold people to account for being prejudiced. This man had the right to defend himself in court, and failed to persuade a judge that he, as a public business owner, was not being discriminatory. Religion should be tolerated in the workplace, as long as it does not impinge on things more important like human rights.

And in my opinion, being gay in the bible is about as taboo as eating shellfish and mentioned far less often than overall lessons of acceptance and love for all, so this man’s “religious rights” are, in my opinion, purely discriminatory and anti-gay.

I actually have some sympathy with your thought if you expressed it in the way (I hope) you meant it. There is no need for gay people to speak, act and dress in ways which are overly flamboyant. I would feel uncomfortable sitting next to two men making out (as I would a man and a woman). Camp or overly flamboyant people, straight or gay irritate me, and I would certainly class that Only Way Is Essex lot (most of whom I assume are straight but I’ve never really watched more than an hour of it) who fake tan and get man-icures fairly reprehensible.

But the description clearly only applies to a minority and I would definitely expect to be asked to tone it down if I stereotyped an entire minority like this.

 

Then maybe you need to rethink your request, or move elsewhere.

Nobody round here could fix my Asus tablet. They all only fix Apple or Samsung devices. Tough luck on me.

 

Come on Moog - if all the dentists suddenly decided that they didn't want to have gay patients that would be an unacceptable state of affairs. The law seems reasonable in this instance and the judge has got it right.

 

this seems to be the keypoint that kelso is mising, despite him now having written it in as many words several times.

just to be clear to kelso, no one is saying you can't have an opinion about things. no one is even saying that you can't express it. everyone is saying that being completely and unfathomably rude to a table of people and then getting sanctimonious (a word you used funnily enough) about them being rude back is ungraceful and churlish behaviour.

 

Some very fair points.

Your comments around the Civil Rights legislation are well made. But was it really the law that changed things? Didn't the law piggy-back on the civil rights movement in general? And how much has it really changed? Discrimination festers away in the bible belt in the US to this day despite Obama being in the White House.

As to the bakers, well their defence was that they hadn't refused to bake any cake. Just that particular cake. I tend to believe them. The judge didn't. I say he's wrong. I wonder what a jury would have said.

As to the bible I know very little about it. But I thought two places called Sodom and Gomorrah featured quite prominently.

I didn't "stereotype an entire minority". Simply described what my reaction was in a specific situation and from your comments it sounds as if yours would have been pretty much the same.

 

But I wasn't rude to them! I simply described how I had felt in another situation. And I wasn't rude in that situation either. Simply moved on.

And it's not about expressing an opinion or what I believe in either. It's about how I felt in that situation. I'm at a loss how to explain that any more clearly. I accept that gay people 'feel' differently to me. But somehow I'm not allowed to express how I felt and be given the same licence? I don't think so.

 

and they in turn expressed how they felt. (hey look, i changed the word and put it in bold, but the effect is still the same!) But somehow they're not allowed to express how they felt and be given the same licence? I don't think so.

everything you write can easily be put in the other column and it makes perfect sense, yet you keep saying "that's not what i mean!"

 

As opposed to an Orwellian nanny state?

 

Fair enough. Yes it can be reversed. The reaction still surprised me though particularly seeing as it wasn't directed at them. No-one would have known what I felt if I hadn't articulated it. They got annoyed because they felt on behalf of a third party who I'd not annoyed in the first place. I thought they'd have simply found it interesting.

OK. No that's not entirely true really. That particular group were the most boring pc walk the line group I'd ever come across. Every left wing cause. Stick to the straight and narrow. Deviation not allowed. So as a relative free-thinker I thought I'd chuck that particular bombshell into the mix in a 'light the blue touch paper, retire and watch the firework display' kinda way.

And boy did it kick off! Like the effing 4th of July.