Gay Cakes and Christian Persecution (LGBT)

Apologia Studios

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00:15

So Daniel, welcome to Apologia TV. Thank you. Yeah. So where are we right now?

00:22

At the moment, you're sitting in our bakery in Newton Abbey, Northern Ireland.

00:28

Northern Ireland. And we're sitting in your business. This is our family business, yeah,

00:34

Asher's Baking Company. Okay. And this isn't the only one. This is the only bakery, and then we have six small shops, sandwich shops, that sell a bit of fresh bread and sandwiches.

00:47

How long has this been a family business? It was started by my dad in 1992, so we're coming up on what's that, 25 years this year.

00:57

Okay. Yeah. And this, is this your baby now? This is something, it's all under your ...

01:03

I wouldn't say that. I'm looking after it. So I'm the general manager, so the day -to -day stuff, yeah,

01:11

I look after that. Okay. And so how long have you been in charge?

01:17

How long have you been in ... I've been here, well, in a sense, I've been here since I was about seven, running in and out, but as general manager,

01:27

I've been here four years. Okay. So, yeah. And so, people who live in this part of Ireland, they know about this business, this place.

01:36

Yeah. They do. And do they know because of the recent controversy, or has it been something that's a part of the life of the people that live here?

01:45

Yeah. People would have known it before. We've been in this area, we've been in this building for 15 years now, and so it's a pretty well -known local bakery, and then since everything that's happened, we're really well -known.

02:00

Okay. Yeah. And so let's talk about that. Yeah. What happened? So what happened about three years ago, we had a guy who was actually a regular customer came in and asked us to do a cake, and we can do cakes with a digital design on it, printed in edible ink, and he wanted us to do a cake that said, support same -sex marriage with a nice picture of Bert and Ernie out of the

02:30

Sesame Street cartoon. Yeah. Well, I won't ask you about what you think the motivations were and something like that, but your case has been the case that is at the forefront in Ireland.

02:48

Yeah, and certainly in Ireland and the UK, it got quite a lot of attention as this kind of clash between Christian beliefs and the beliefs of the sort of LGBT rights, and that's rude.

03:05

So he asked you to bake a cake, support same -sex marriage with Bert and Ernie, and what happened?

03:13

We basically thought about it and pretty quickly said, no, sorry, we can't do that.

03:20

Our conscience wouldn't allow us to do it. Certainly, as Christians, we couldn't see any way that we could do it, so we rang the guy up and said, no, we can't do this order, and from there, we got taken to court by the

03:40

Equality Commission of Northern Ireland, a public body that basically police equality.

03:47

They police equality? Yeah, yeah. Is it an official government? It's an official, yeah, yeah.

03:53

They're a public body appointed by the government, so yeah, they're official.

03:58

They are the body in Northern Ireland when it comes to equality legislation and issues. So when they police equality, what did that look like for you?

04:08

For us, that looked... The first letter we got from them basically accused us of discriminating on the grounds of same -sex orientation and asked us how we intended to compensate the man.

04:27

That was the very first letter. How do you intend to compensate him? Yes. For what? For the...

04:33

Pain and suffering? Well, yeah, the pain and suffering and what we caused to him through saying, no, sorry, we can't do that.

04:43

And you were really abusive to him when you told him no, correct? We rang him up, my mother rang him up, and she's quite a meek and mild lady, and said, we can't do this, we're

04:57

Christians. And that was it. And what was his response? His response was,

05:03

I can't believe this is happening, and I'm going to speak to a lawyer about this.

05:09

Okay. Just like that. Just like that. Yeah. How long was it after that you discovered that he was pursuing you?

05:18

Yeah, a month later we got the letter from the Equality Commission. Okay. Yeah.

05:23

From the Equality Commission. And so they contact you and they say, what are you going to do to compensate him? Yeah. And what did it look like after that?

05:31

What was your response? What was your life like? Well, our response from there was to say, we're living according to our

05:38

Christian beliefs, so how does that play out?

05:45

As in, are you meaning we have to do this? Are you going to force us to do this? Is every customer that walks in and we disagree with because of our

05:54

Christian beliefs, are we going to have to compensate them? Yeah. And we sent the letter back to them, basically putting forward what our

06:03

Christian beliefs were, with Bible verses, you know, to back it up. We're not just pulling this out of the sky.

06:09

This is what we really believe. Based on the word of God. It's based on the word of God, yeah. It's not based on how we feel or what we think about the man.

06:19

It's not that you simply think it's icky. Yeah. It's because the Bible says. Yeah.

06:24

Okay. Yeah. And we emphasized that from the start. It was nothing to do with the man.

06:31

To be honest, we didn't even know he was in a same -sex relationship or he identified as gay.

06:39

He was a regular customer. He had been in and out several times. So yeah, we sent that back to them, made a reasonable enough explanation.

06:51

And from there, they went on to say to us, basically that explanation wasn't good enough.

06:57

They wanted us to apologize to the man and basically make sure it didn't happen again.

07:05

Or else they were going to take us to court. So then it went up a notch. After that, we wrote back again and said, we don't feel we have anything to apologize for.

07:19

Because in our eyes, we've done nothing wrong. We're living according to our Christian beliefs. And shortly after that, they issued proceedings to take us to court.

07:33

No, it's not. Yeah. Yes.

07:55

Well, as they currently are. Yes, exactly.

08:13

We were taking the court back on their body. Yeah. And the interesting thing was, it started out as the accusers of discriminating on the grounds of sexual orientation.

08:28

But as the proceedings went on, they widened that out to discrimination on the grounds of political opinion.

08:35

Which in Northern Ireland is quite a hot topic. Yeah. In Northern Ireland, abortion is illegal and same -sex marriage is illegal.

08:45

Yes. And that, I think, is compelling in terms of, you were operating as a citizen of Northern Ireland, according to biblical principles and according to the laws of Northern Ireland.

08:59

Yeah. It's interesting. So, what was the final outcome? The final outcome was, we were found guilty of discriminating on the grounds of sexual orientation and on political opinion.

09:13

So it became a political issue. We discriminated against this man's political opinions by not making a cake for him that said support same -sex marriage.

09:22

What about your political opinions? Oh, they don't matter. They don't matter? No, he's the customer. We just have to do whatever he wants.

09:28

Did you make the cake? No. No. Did you apologise? No. No. So, what was the ultimate penalty?

09:39

500 pounds was the fine we got, which we have to pay to the customer.

09:50

So you made 500 bucks? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's better than what happens in the

09:56

United States. Yeah, I so believe. It's a lot more over there. Tell me how, as a believer, how was this for you?

10:07

Walking through this with this kind of, we have to call it what it is, with this kind of persecution for your faith.

10:14

What was it like? Yeah, it was tough at times. I think at the very start, it was at its hardest because it escalated in a way that we didn't see coming.

10:27

The media kind of latched onto it and really blew it up into something bigger.

10:33

All over the news? All over the news. Like when you went home at night and switched on your TV. They saw your face?

10:38

Yeah, it was on the news. Like Sky News, BBC News. Seeing the newspapers, they all got onto it.

10:48

There was a lot of controversy. There was a lot of people on each side arguing for us and arguing against us.

10:57

As to did we have the right to do this? But it was tough because you felt that pressure.

11:05

But as time went on, we realised that when you're in that situation, that's when you trust in God.

11:12

That's when you really realise that there's nothing in me that can get through this. Like I have to depend on God here.

11:19

And we become less and less. He becomes more. So it was good. It was good for us.

11:25

How did it change you? How were you sanctified through this process? Well, we prayed harder than we'd ever prayed before.

11:34

We learnt, I suppose, to deal with people in a meek way and in a humble way.

11:45

As in, there was a lot of passion on both sides of the argument.

11:51

And we had to speak to people on both sides of the argument. But I was learning to do that in a way, as the

11:59

Bible says, with gentleness and respect. And that wins people. In a way, you can communicate with people there without getting their backs up, without feeling like you're pushing them away, that you don't care.

12:14

We always said, it was never about the man, it was never about the customer, it was about what he wanted us to put in that cake.

12:23

We couldn't do that. Do you hate gay people? No. When you saw yourself on television, and surely you saw people saying things about you that were just completely untrue,

12:37

I imagine there were words like homophobic and bigot and things like that. What would you want people to know about you as a

12:45

Christian and how you feel about the issue of homosexuality? And how do you feel about gay people?

12:52

I don't see them as this separate, special kind of people that need to be treated in a very delicate, special way.

13:08

They all need God. If you don't have Jesus Christ in your life, you need him. And that doesn't matter whether you're gay or straight.

13:16

It's the same across the board. So I try not to make any kind of difference whenever I'm talking to those people.

13:29

Just treat them with that same respect as you would anyone else that you meet every day of your life. What message would you want everyone to know?

13:37

People have eyes on you, they know what you've been through, and there are people who are hostile towards you and your faith and what you've done, and there are people who support you, but what would you broadly want everybody to know if they could know a single message from you?

13:51

What do you want them to hear? I would say what we did was hard in a way, and it did bring a lot of pressure to us as a family and to the business.

14:04

But from it, we've seen God use it for good, not just in our own lives, but there's people all over Northern Ireland that are talking about our case, that are talking about, is that right, is it wrong?

14:17

And in those places, there's people talking about Jesus, and they're talking about what it means to live your life in a way that everything points towards Jesus, that you live your life to the glory of God.

14:32

So while it was hard for us to go through what we did go through, if it means the gospel goes out further, then that's a good thing.

14:39

So I would say to anyone else, any other Christians that are in that decision, place where they have to make a hard call, take your stand, because God can use it for good.

14:51

We've seen it, and we hope other people will be encouraged to do the same thing.