The Equalities Commission’s court case against Ashers, the Christian bakers from Northern Ireland has concluded – and the judge has reserved judgment, meaning she will take more time to think it over. There has been enormous interest in the case in Northern Ireland – a rally that was held in support of the bakers filled a 2,500 seat venue and had to turn 500 people away. The Commission’s case against the bakery seemed to have altered slightly from the original complaint, which was that the bakery discriminated against a gay customer by refusing to bake a cake with a pro-gay-marriage slogan on it. The Commission’s emphasis in court was that businesses should not be allowed to breach contract law for reasons of conscience; their lawyer then claimed that the case also involved discrimination against the customer on the basis of his “likely” sexual orientation. When the lawyer was challenged about other possible freedom-of-conscience cases if Ashers were found guilty, he answered based on contract law; for example, he said that a Muslim-run printing business could not refuse to print a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed unless its terms and conditions prohibited the printing of all cartoons. Ashers’ arguments were that they had accepted the order and taken the money (thus forming a contract) in order to avoid creating a confrontation in their shop; and that their problem was with the message on the cake, not the customer, who they had served several times previously. The judge’s conclusion was that the case involved complex legal issues which needed further consideration.
Three major supermarkets have declined to stock Easter Eggs that have a picture of a cross on their packaging and include a leaflet explaining the resurrection. Asda have never stocked eggs from The Meaningful Chocolate Company while Sainsbury’s and the Co-op stopped doing so, apparently due to poor sales last year. One supermarket allegedly asked the company “what does Easter have to do with the church?” The eggs are listed on Waitrose’s website but are currently unavailable.
A Muslim judge fined a Christian street preacher ₤1,400 for making “homophobic” remarks by reading and preaching from the book of Leviticus – and told him he should have preached from a different part of the Bible. The judge said that the preacher, from Taunton in Somerset, should not have preached from Leviticus 20, which describes homosexuality as an “abomination,” but used Leviticus 18 instead. The unrepentant preacher told the judge his ruling was “flawed and way out of line” and added, “ You will answer to the same God as me.”
A former Muslim who is now a Christian pastor has told Christians that the way to reach others, including Muslims, is to reach out to them with love, even when society hates them. Afshin Ziafat has born in the USA but his family moved to Iran when he was 2 – and then escaped back to America when he was 6, at the time of the Muslim revolution in 1979. He tells of persecution against him and his family because they were Iranian; but a “Christian lady” who treated him with love and kindness, his second grade English tutor, gave him a Bible one day and made him promise to read it when he got older. “Had any other American given me that book,” he said, “I would have thrown it away. But she earned the right to be heard by loving me.”
The vote by the Presbyterian Church of the USA to accept gay marriage has led to a breach of fellowship with the National Black Church Initiative, a coalition of 34,000 black churches. The NBCI described the redefinition of marriage as “a universal sin against the entire church and its members.”
In Canada, a six year legal battle has ended with a Supreme Court decision that a Catholic school is entitled to teach ethics and world religions from a Catholic viewpoint rather than a secular viewpoint. The decision stated: “A secular state respects religious differences; it does not seek to extinguish them.”
In sport, British success in disabled sport continued with Dame Sarah Storey winning two gold medals in the Para-cycling world championship in Apeldoorn, Netherlands. Britain won a total of nine cycling medals.
And finally, passengers on a Virgin Atlantic flight from Manchester airport had their flight cancelled for a very unusual reason. The flight was due to be the first to fly from Manchester to Atlanta, Georgia, and airport fire crews decided to give the plane a rousing send-off with their water cannons. However, one of the fire engines accidentally set its hose to squirt fire-retardant foam rather than water, and the foam clogged the plane’s engines, causing it to be taken out of service for a safety check. Passengers were accommodated in local hotels and re-booked for the following day.
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