The long and short of this thing is: previously to these new rules, religious organizations were exempt from a bunch of regulations and rules that protect against discrimination. This was done basically to protect religious liberty.

These new rules change that, and require that the Catholic Church officially starts providing benefits and services to LGBT people. However you feel about that issue, you need to also understand that this is the state telling a religious organization what to do even if it conflicts with its religious beliefs. That’s the issue here. The Catholic Church isn’t saying that if gay marriage is passed into law that they’ll pull all their charities. It’s the D.C. city council who is threatening to pull contracts from the church if the church doesn’t change.

Blaming the church is just taking the easy way out. And I disagree with the Church on its position toward gays. So there it is.

There is a grey area where the church ends and the public begins. But I’m comfortable with the church’s hiring policies being within the church’s sphere, and the provision of services to the services being part of the public (and subject to the public’s laws).

In Massachusetts where I live, Catholic Charities had been running the oldest and most successful adoption service for orphan children. But they refused to place orphan children with gay couples, asserting that this would be against their religious principles. About 10 years ago, a gay couple successfully sued them in court; the court ruled that Catholic Charities had to place children with gay couples or else be punished for violating state antidiscrimination laws.

Catholic Charities, forced by a government edict to violate its religious principles, had no choice: They shut down their adoption service entirely, rather than be forced to violate their religious principles about gay parenting. And that destroyed the oldest and best adoption service for orphan children in Massachusetts.

This was a clear case of the state forcing a church to do things against its religious principles, which violates the Establishment Clause in my opinion. The utter hypocrisy of liberals cheering such a court ruling while always waving the mantra of “separation of church and state” was revealed for everybody to see.

If I were using government grants to teach sex education to high school students, and the government imposed a new rule that required anyone receiving those grants to teach abstinence ONLY (no safer sex, no contraception), I would try to find my funding elsewhere.

Government funds are a way for government to control what people do. If states want highway funds from the federal government they may have to lower speed limits, or raise the drinking age.

I think mainstream churches will come around on gay marriage eventually due to changes in attitude within the churches themselves. To see them coerced by the government is a reminder that separation of church and state goes in both directions. Government funding of religious charities is a threat to that separation.

Though I think the church’s position is the wrong one, and also bad p.r., I think they have the right to have a position.