Stuff your hypotheticals. The discrimination I experience is real.

It’s amazing how discrimination always becomes hypothetical to people who, on the whole, haven’t experienced it. Rich, straight, white guys telling the world their future notional freedom has been somehow curtailed by a decision against a baker in County Antrim.

These have all been posed to me today:

“Suppose someone walked into my bakery and asked for a cake with the message ‘legalise slavery’ on it.”

“What if I were a baker and someone asked me to ice a cake with a pro-life message?”

“What if I were a Jewish baker, asked to write a neonazi message?”

“A Christian walks into a Muslim sign writer’s shop and orders a placard. He says it should carry a cartoon of the prophet and the slogan Muslims Go Home.”

Only none of those things happened. Here is what did happen: a gay guy walked into a bakery – a bakery not a church – and asked for a cake with a message on it, something this bakery did for hundreds of people every year. He was told to take his business elsewhere, because the owner found gay marriage offensive. As clear a case of discrimination as you are likely to see.

The judge has not mandated that the baker find gay marriage any less offensive, of course. The court has not injuncted the baker to make the cake. It has just fined him for discriminating against his customers. That’s all. His “moral objection” will cost him £500, because it was found to be discriminatory and, so, unlawful. If a neonazi sues a Jewish bakery any time soon, a judge can deal with that situation sensibly, just like a judge dealt with this one.

“Actually, same sex marriage is not legal in Northern Ireland, so the law supports the baker’s position”, said one genius to me. Only the baker wasn’t asked to marry a man. He was asked to ice a cake. Even in Northern Ireland, that is still legal.

Apparently acting against this kind of behaviour, which gay people experience on a regular basis, is aggressively pursuing some kind of homosexual agenda. We are supposed to just brush it off, just go to another bakery and not cause a fuss. And why? Because to act against this bigotry, might prejudice a bunch of fictitious people facing situations which you made up.

And to compound it all, you pursue these arguments by suggesting some sort of moral equivalence between being gay and being a fan of slavery, an islamophobe, a pro-lifer or a neonazi. Which is not that far away, frankly, from people arguing against marriage equality with “What is next? Brothers marrying sisters? Men marrying dogs?”

So, no, I’m not going to another bakery. You advertised a service. I employed you to provide it, not to edit my life. Your beliefs do not entitle you to some sort of Magical Christian Immunity from the law. Do your fucking job.