Equal rights are sacred, but ideas are fair game

Changing any law, or Constitution, or State policy, like an election, means an open political debate, no matter what the content.

Any firm or citizen may freely choose to fund or ignore or aid or oppose any proposal or candidate.

So how can any bakery be forced to provide a cake with a political slogan when they are entitled to oppose that slogan or any other slogan?

And oppose it whether or not that slogan be ‘State pensions for convicted IRA veterans’, or ‘Support gay marriage’, or ‘The bishop of Rome alone is Infallible when teaching both faith and morals’, or ‘Shut all council playgrounds on Sundays’, or ‘The State must prohibit alcohol’, or ‘Government must not only permit, but also fund, fox-hunting’, or ‘Support Islamic polygamy’, or ‘Legalise paedophilia’, or ‘legalise heroin’, or ‘Support Scientology’. Or anything else.

All persons have equal rights and are protected. Free speech is a sacred value and right, and a necessity for any democracy to flourish.

Persons who are Muslim [or Roman Catholic or Trotskyites] have rights, and they are entitled to what Sen George Mitchell called ‘parity of esteem’, to equal treatment, but not their ideas, not Islam as such [or Roman Catholicism or Trotskyism ].

Nor Scientology. All ideas, and systems, and structures are, and must remain, open to robust and unfettered public debate.

On cakes or on TV.

Tom Carew

Ranelagh

Dublin 6