The Mormon Church throws its support behind a Salt Lake City law prohibiting discrimination against homosexuals in housing and employment (HT Andrew Sullivan):

The Mormon church for the first time has announced its support of gay rights legislation, an endorsement that helped gain unanimous approval for Salt Lake city laws banning discrimination against gays in housing and employment. The Utah-based church's support ahead of Tuesday night's vote came despite its steadfast opposition to gay marriage, reflected in the high-profile role it played last year in California's Proposition 8 ballot measure that barred such unions. "The church supports these ordinances because they are fair and reasonable and do not do violence to the institution of marriage," Michael Otterson, the director of public affairs for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said.

Meanwhile, the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. threatens to stop providing services for the homeless in response to a pending DC move to permit gay marriage, apparently (according to reports) because the law might prevent the Church from discriminating against homosexual couples in the provision of employee benefits:

Under the legislation, which the City Council is expected to pass next month, religious organizations would not be required to perform or make space available for same-sex weddings. But they would have to obey laws prohibiting discrimination against gays and lesbians. Fearful that they could be forced, among other things, to extend employee benefits to same-sex married couples, church officials said they would have no choice but to abandon their contracts with the city.

I would really like to hear what these "other things" are that might be motivating the Church in D.C. to threaten this dramatic step. I just cannot see how the power to refuse employee benefits to same-sex married couples constitutes the sort of fundamental issue of conscience (even given the Church's stance on homosexuality) that justifies this threat. The Church would likely say that it does not want to be forced to offer its implicit endorsement of same-sex unions by extending employee benefits to them -- but it's hard to see how being forced to provide benefits by law risks conveying any such message. Its objection would seem to have to be to one of two things: (1) the city's legal requirement that such benefits be provided, which would send a message of endorsement; or (2) the notion that providing benefits to same-sex couples will cause some subset of those couples to remain in their relationship where they otherwise would have broken up (under financial stress?) such that the Church will be cooperating in what it perceives to be an evil relationship. The first seems extremely dubious, since the endorsement comes from the law, not the Church's compliance with the law, and so the message of endorsement is the same even if the Church is exempted from its reach. The second seems highly attenuated as a factual matter -- the cooperation required by the law is so remote and speculative that any claim of conscience based on it seems extremely weak to me.Good for the Mormons! Shame on us.UPDATE: Tom Reese says:

[C]an the Catholic Church give health care benefits to gay partners of its employees? The archdiocese says it cannot because gay marriage is against its teachings.However, remarrying after a divorce is also against Catholic teaching, yet the church gives health care benefits to divorced and remarried couples. No one believes that the church has changed its teaching on divorce. No one will believe that the church has changed its teaching on gay sex if it provides medical benefits to gay couples.What is needed right now is a toning down of the attacks against the church by those who support the city council's position. Both sides need to look for compromise. An exemption from the law for religious organizations would affect very few people and would allow the church to continue working with the city on behalf of the poor. The city council could always revisit the issue in the future, but the middle of a deep recession is not a good time to fire the best provider of social services in the city.

I have nothing but the highest respect for Fr. Reese, but I couldn't disagree more with his take on this. In particular, that last suggestion is a total mystery to me. After showing that the Church's position does not appear to be one of consistent and sincere conscience on the extension of spousal benefits, he goes on to suggest an exemption because it will only unjustly harm a small number of gay married couples. The requirement that the Church provide spousal benefits does not compel the Church to profess or believe anything. This is different from the adoption example from Massachusetts, where the required cooperation was more direct and the threat to conscience therefore more palpable. Here, the move to withdraw from dealing with the city extends to areas unrelated to adoption and therefore strikes me as punitive and, ultimately, indefensible. Nor does the Church get off the hook (as Fr. Reese suggests earlier in his piece) by saying that it is the city that is refusing to deal with the Church and, therefore, that it is the city that is doing the threatening. The Church is saying it will refuse to comply with the law. Whether we characterize the threat as the withdrawal from the service contracts or as the refusal to comply with the law, it seems to me that the ball (and the wrong) is in the Church's court.