Christian Family face possible legal action

I don't feel sorry for the bakers.

I do feel sorry for the bakers and am not against gay people at all, my sister is gay. But there are extremists in all walks of life and I do think these were out to cause trouble.

If the police had done something similar, it would have been labelled a sting, and been inadmissable in court.

I think it is the way in which this cake was ordered. It wasn't an innocent person going into any bakery ordering a cake which was about two gay people being together. It sounds like they were targeted for their Christian beliefs and that they were then tested as to whether they would make this cake.

My objection is the fact, and I said this at the time, that they used children's characters on a cake to portray grown up issues. What on earth have Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street got to do with gays? My daughter watched this in all innocence and children should be able to do so now without the connotation that it is associated with gay men.

You having a go at humour absent?

Bless.

I'm sorry you didn't understand my brief post back there Ariadne. I only managed to get that much out before my brain seemed to go quite numb.

Wearing mixed fabrics!

I rather like the idea of god as patissier.

Leviticus describes male homosexuality as an 'abomination'. But then it describes lots of things as 'abominations' - wearing mixed fabrics for example. So not such a very serious 'sin' then. But somehow, some believers are fascinated by it and love to fulminate about it.

Belief is a choice, sexual orientation isn't.

If christians do not speak about God, and what they think God wants, who is going to?
If we do not try to interpret what he wants, again, what is the point.

The get out clause relates to chrisitians not being able to get out of things with God.

This idea of being able to speak for what god thinks is quite amazing! (I am trying not to use the word arrogant, but it is sizzling around in my brain!). What a pity we do not all think he is thinking the same thing! How much happier the world might be.

Providing beliefs are genuine, then people – Christian or otherwise – cannot separate them from their actions with a good conscience. There is no "get out clause", an expression that implies an arrogant assumption of moral superiority.

The instructions concerning homosexuality don't exist in the Bible, either, at least not in the New Testament. Instructions about heterosexuality don't either. Jesus makes no mention at all of sex. It had nothing to do with his message.

The nearest is the story of the woman taken in adultery, where she was about to be stoned to death (I don't think it mentions the punishment her lover was to get) Jesus' challenge to them was "Let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone" at which they all melted shamefacedly away. He sent the woman away saying "Go, and sin no more". Her sin was adultery, not sex.

The early Christian church did not concern itself with what anyone did in bed, they had other goals in view. It was later that the church extended its influence into every aspect of people's lives.

I think Jesus would find the way people treated one another more important than the precise nature of the physical expression of love.

It is actually quite difficult to put into words.

As a christian, we cannot spereate our beliefs from what we do. We dont have that get out clause.
So we have to make best guesses from what we know.

What we do and write and speak and everything, is judged. Putting something in the public arena that you dont agree with, and dont think God agrees with, comes back on you when you are judged, either which way.

I do think though, that christians make decisions daily, and this one probably wouldnt rank high in importance to God if we did or did not do the words on the cake.
At the end of the day, the instructions regarding this I dont think are covered in the bible[as far as I know], so we can only guess.

Why not?

I am not sure what Jesus would have done.

My guess is that he would have wanted to bake them a cake. I suspect he couldnt have written those words though.

No! That's just so not so.

I think the mistake a lot of people make is that they think their sacred beliefs should be sacred to everyone else as well, when, really that's unreasonable.

Well said, bags. That, to me, is the crux of the issue - the conviction of some that they, and they alone are right and everyone else is wrong. Thereby lies the root of intolerance, political and religious, and all its ramifications, which are legion.

I believe Jesuses (lots of them, including one famous one) probably lived. I don't believe he is or was god. I don't know what he would do. Neither does anyone else, but thinking along the lines of "What would Jesus do?" brought me to that possible scenario.

I think the mistake a lot of people make is that they think their sacred beliefs should be sacred to everyone else as well when, really, that's unreasonable.

If there are certain kinds of law abiding and harmless people you cannot do business with perhaps you shouldn't run a business.

It wasn't really worth it all. It was only a bloody cake. They could have gone hnere Yum.

I can see Bags' point about not asking the bakers to be gay. Just to do business with homosexuals, as you would with the rest of the general public. But should there be exemptions for religious beliefs?

I don't know.

How can you possibly know what Jesus would have done Bags. You don't even believe in him.

There is no UK law giving freedom to follow terrorists. I'm not sure about the Nazis. But it's entirely different.