Watch as actor and LGBT ally Patrick Stewart decides to come down on the side of anti-gay bakers.
“X-Men” and “Star Trek” star Patrick Stewart sat down with the BBC recently and revealed that after giving it much thought, he couldn’t side with someone who had wanted a cake that had a pro-gay message.
This was a real court case in Northern Ireland, where a Christian bakery chain refused a customer who wanted just that – a cake that said, “support gay marriage,” along with images of Sesame Street’s Bert and Ernie.
Calling the issue a “deliciously difficult subject,” Stewart explained that he wrestled with it, and in the end explained why he sided with the bakers.
“It was not because it was a gay couple that they objected, it was not because they were celebrating some sort of marriage or an agreement between them,” Stewart said. “It was the actual words on the cake that they objected to. Because they found the words offensive.”
“I would support their rights to say, ‘No, this is personally offensive to my beliefs, I will not do it.'”
Sir Patrick Stewart is a long-time LGBT ally, so much so that when fellow actor Ellen Page came out and Stewart tweeted his support, The Guardian wrote, “Some gay people, such as Sir Patrick Stewart, think Page’s coming out speech is newsworthy.”
Stewart offered this amusing tweet in response to the Guardian being corrected:
Meanwhile, as The Advocate reports, the judge in the “gay cake case” found Ashers Bakery guilty, calling their actions “direct discrimination” with “no justification,” fining them the equivalent of US $763.
“I feel bad for them,” Stewart said.
Here’s his BBC interview:
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Image via BBC Newsnight/YouTube