Remember the Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens debate about whether or not the Catholic Church is a force for good? In one part of the video, a well meaning woman stood up and commented on the fact that she was a Catholic and didn’t really have any issue with Fry’s homosexuality. Stephen responded by saying that the position of the Catholic Church regarding homosexuality is clear, and even though individual Catholics might differ in their opinion, it didn’t change the fact they support a bigoted institution.

In Washington, a Catholic Charity has threatened to cut its services if it’s forced to comply with new same sex laws making it illegal to discriminate against gays. The opposition from the church comes from the fact they won’t be able to actively promote their bigotry and hatred for homosexuals. Their arguments are, as usual, very unconvincing.

“Let’s say an individual caterer is a staunch Christian and someone wants him to do a cake with two grooms on top,” said council member Yvette M. Alexander (D-Ward 6), the sponsor of the amendment. “Why can’t they say, based on their religious beliefs, ‘I can’t do something like that’?

Pretend instead of having two grooms on the cake, it’s an interracial marriage, and the baker refused to bake a wedding cake because mixed marriages are against his “religious convictions”. We wouldn’t stand for that shit for a second. True, I dislike the idea of anyone being forced to do the right thing, but we cannot allow people to be treated like second class citizens, and we have to do our best to stamp out bigotry in the same way we’ve tried so hard to stamp racism (it’s a long process, obviously).

“The issue here is they are using public funds, and to allow people to discriminate with public money is unacceptable,” Rosenstein said.

The city is taking a pretty hard stance on the issue, and won’t allow itself to be bullied by the Archbishop, who wants to dangle their charitable services as a free license to practice open bigotry. I say fuck ‘em. Sure, it’s harsh and it sucks for the people who were benefiting from their services, but human beings are a charitable bunch, and I’m positive that other organizations will be more than happy to pick where the church left off. We cannot ignore the evils of an institution simply because it hides behind a façade of charity, especially when this same institution tries to use its position to blackmail secular governments.