Nobody has the right to be free of discrimination.
All discrimination perhaps, no, but we have legislation to enforce rights that we as a society have agreed which are rights not to be discriminated against on the basis of some fairly basic characteristics.
We routinely discriminate and are discriminated against in all kinds of ways.
Yep. And sometimes it's justified, and sometimes it isn't, and sometimes it's not important, but where we've had really obvious examples of it being widespread and harmful we've stepped in.
Certain groups of people are protected against discrimination based on their membership of that group but that doesn't mean we can't discriminate against them in there ways.
And whilst I didn't spell that out, it should have been implicit from the context.
I can't discriminate against a gay job candidate because they are gay, but I can discriminate against a gay job candidate because they are not qualified.
That's not discrimination.
Refusing to bake a cake because of the message it conveys is not the same as refusing to bake a cake because of the sexuality of the customer.
As I said, not intrinsically, but if you're trying to separate someone's sexuality from their behaviour around that sexuality, that's a difficult line to draw at the best of times, and the law is phrased so as to note that your intent isn't necessarily the determining factor, but the likelihood of the outcome is significant.
If you have no intention of discriminating against gay people, but your actions are disproportionately likely to affect gay people - say, if you object to baking a cake which you perceive to support gay marriage - then you are in breach of the law.
O.
