Heather Bellamy spoke with Simon Calvert from The Christian Institute, about the public reaction to the recent ruling, the implications for free speech and freedom of conscience for all people and the changes to the law that he would like to see happen.

We have had some notable successes and we've even had cases where you didn't necessarily win the case, but what you got out of the ruling was a statement of principle which does help to advance religious freedom.

We have helped Christian street preachers who have been wrongly arrested and wrongly prosecuted. We've helped them to not only get the charges dropped, but also to sue for damages for wrongful arrest and unlawful imprisonment. We have helped people to defend themselves against accusations from regulators that they were being somehow homophobic and we've been able to evoke various exemptions and protections, which exist within equality law that protect the ability of churches and Christian organisations to operate in accordance with their faith. Quite rightly Parliament inserted exemptions, but we had to fight as Christians to keep and extend some of those exemptions, but we got them. If you run a Christian conference centre for example, you can provide your services only to those who share your Christian faith if you want, and again, that too is protected in law, so there are protections. At the same time though, when we've been involved with the big three significant cases, when it comes to the clash between religion and gay rights, so that's the case of Lillian Ladele the civil partnership registrar, Peter and Hazelmary Bull, the Christian B&B owners and now the McArthur family in relation to the Ashers case, certainly the outcome of those cases has been very disappointing and quite damaging when it comes to religious liberty.

Heather: Is there going be another challenge to this ruling?

Simon: The family, The Christian Institute and their lawyers, will sit down together and we will take advice from the lawyers on what options there may be for appealing the case. Then the family will want to make their decision from there. I think that's a process, which will take a matter of weeks to decide. It's obviously a big decision and we'll have to wait and see what the advice is from the lawyers.

Heather: What would be your best hope for the future in terms of a change in the law? What would you want to see going forward?

Simon: We've long argued that the equality law ought to be amended in order to reasonably accommodate religious and conscientious belief.

Reasonable accommodation is a concept that is recognised in law in other jurisdictions around the world. It would be a simple way of providing a better balancing act when you have clashes of rights.

It's worth remembering that, for example, Baroness Hale who ruled against Peter and Hazelmary Bull on the B&B case, later gave a speech where she questioned whether the equality law had got the balance right when it came to dealing with people like that. There is a body of opinion that thinks that you could amend equality law to require the court to do a bit more of a balancing act. It wouldn't mean that the Christian would win every time, it would just mean a bit more consideration would be given to their rights and to their freedoms and to their conscience. I think that there would be broad support for something like that; a kind of re-balancing of equality law.

That is an option which would certainly be open to politicians both at Westminster and in Holyrood in Northern Ireland, but obviously there is also the possibility of an appeal to the Supreme Court, or ideally even beyond that, where judges may make a ruling which better protects the balancing of rights.

The fact remains though, that everyone who has looked at the masses of media coverage of the Ashers case in the past week will know, there is broad public sympathy for the idea that when it comes to the specific issue of whether you should be forced to help promote other people's opinions, people think that that's not right.
So on that very narrow and precise issue of coercing other people's consciences to promote other people's points of view, I think there'll be strong support for any change to the law, which would help to prevent that kind of situation arising again in the future. That isn't just for Christians, but for people of whatever views.