Ashers debate is about conscience

Stephen Glenn states in his letter ('˜Hotels provide a service and so they are right to accept bookings,' April 26) that he is glad that various hotels permitted their premises to be used for Christian Institute meetings in support of Ashers bakery, claiming that this did not imply their support for the campaign.

Perhaps not, but whether or not they supported the campaign, by making their premises available the hotel managements were aiding and abetting in it.

When businesses were trading with apartheid era South Africa they were merely providing a service.

Is Mr Glenn now suggesting that this did not help the apartheid regime?

Certainly his party did not think so at the time. Why the change when it comes to homosexual rights?

The real question is, if the management of a particular hotel had conscientious objections to staging such an event, should they be forced, by law, to go against their conscience and stage it anyway?

One would assume that if the Christian Institute had been met with such a refusal they would have had the decency, (and basic good manners), not to compel the hotel management to go against their conscience and have gone elsewhere for a venue.

The heart of the Ashers bakery debate surely hinges around freedom of conscience. Should the state force people to do, or aid and abet, something they consider to be morally wrong? Is the state now going to impose its moral values on the population? I

s refusing to conform with the moral values of the establishment to be a crime? It was in Nazi Germany, communist Russia and China and in every other tyranny.

Is Britain to go the way of politically correct neo-fascism? Let us hope that the Supreme Court will avert this danger.

Tom Ferguson, Ballymoney