The Belfast “gay cake” case may become a defining moment in the politics of identity. It demonstrates above all how ill-equipped secular society appears to be when it looks for a common moral basis for resolving conflicts of rights. A bakery in Belfast run by two evangelical Christians declined an order from a gay man to bake him a cake bearing the message “Support gay marriage”. Despite two earlier court rulings against them, they won their case at the Supreme Court.

It ruled that the bakers did not refuse to fulfil the order because of their customer’s sexual orientation, and that they had a right, under freedom of speech, not to be made to publicise views they did not agree with.