As many people have already observed, the bakery discrimination case involving the Ashers is bound to have an influence on the same-sex marriage vote in Ireland. The argument put forward in favour of same-sex marriage has always been an essentially libertarian one; that is, if you don’t like gay marriage, don’t marry a man. But, as the Ashers case shows, it doesn’t work out like that. Gay marriage, despite what many Conservatives proposed, cannot be a libertarian issue after all. A few weeks ago Tim Montgomerie wrote a cover piece on the issue of religious freedom for this magazine. Now I would consider Tim to be one of the rising spiritual leaders of authentic British conservatism, even if he’s not quite at the level of, say, grand ayatollah Charles Moore. But there’s one thing I would disagree with him on, which is where he wrote: