An appeal by a born-again Christian couple who were found guilty of discrimination for refusing to bake a pro-gay marriage cake has been unexpectedly adjourned for three months.
The case was dramatically put back at the appeal court in Belfast after a late intervention by Northern Ireland’s attorney general, John Larkin QC.
The region’s chief law officer has raised legal issues with the court regarding discrimination and equality legislation.
Larkin intervened on the question of any potential conflict between Northern Ireland’s strict equality legislation and European human rights laws.
The province’s lord chief justice, Sir Declan Morgan, agreed to adjourn the appeal until 9 May where it will sit for four days.
He told the court it was “most unfortunate this issue has only arisen two days before hearing. Although we have all tried to see if we could proceed with the case given the amount of work that has been done it seems to us that it is simply not possible to do that without running into some risk of fairness in the hearing.
“We are not going to proceed with the hearing today.”
The fresh hearing will involve arguments about whether or not the local attorney general can become involved in the case.
Michael Wardlow, the Equality Commission’s chief commissioner, said they would be in court to support Gareth Lee, who alleged that Ashers Bakery discriminated against him for refusing to bake a cake with a pro-gay marriage message on it.
“We’re here to support Gareth,” Wardlow said outside the appeal court near Belfast city centre on Wednesday.
Lee, a member of the LGBT advocacy group in Northern Ireland Queer Space, wanted a cake featuring Sesame Street puppets Bert and Ernie with the slogan: support gay marriage.
Daniel and Amy McArthur who own Ashers are taking a case to the court in an attempt to overturn last year’s county court ruling which found them guilty of discrimination. The court imposed a £500 fine on the McArthurs.
But Wardlow stressed that the original Equality Commission case was not an attack on religious freedom.
He said: “There has been a lot of misinformation in the media that somehow this is about closing down religious expression, that faith has to be left at the door of the workplace and that is not true.
“Religious freedom is enshrined in the legislation. The problem is although freedom to believe is absolute, freedom to express that belief is always limited, because if by expressing that belief you discriminate against others then the law must intervene.
“So this is not simply about some form of religious intolerance or closing down of Christian expression because in all of this the other person who has a right in this, who seems to have been forgotten, is Gareth.”
