Do churches have the right to discriminate?

Leslie Fenton has a timely article in Salon that looks at the issue described in the caption of this post. To me the answer is simple: No churches do not have the right to discriminate if they are taking public funds. And the same holds true if they are acting as a quasi agency of the state - e.g., providing adoption and foster care services. Unfortunately, the Roman Catholic Church and its agencies believe that they are entitled to special rights and privileges in the form of receiving millions dollars in public funds while retaining the right to indulge in religious based bigotry against taxpayers who are the source of some of the funds the Church is sucking up out of the public trough. This is really what the recently filed lawsuit in Illinois is all about. It's about special rights - what the opponents of LGBT equality accuse gays of wanting when in fact it is they, not LGBT citizens who are seeking special rights. It is far past time that the courts say no to this in a resounding manner. Here are highlights from Salon:
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Imagine this scenario: As a part of its efforts to fight hunger, the State of Illinois gives out a number of grant contracts to private agencies that run food bank programs. One of these grants goes to the Catholic Church's social services arm, Catholic Charities, which runs a number of food bank programs in several Illinois cities. Soon, state investigators discover that Catholic Charities has imposed a severe condition on its food bank program: They will not distribute the food to hungry families unless the recipients sign an affidavit stating that none of the family members are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. Illinois then terminates its grant to Catholic Charities. The group immediately files suit claiming religious discrimination, and conservative legislators repeatedly introduce new legislation in an attempt to exempt all religious organizations from having to follow the state's human rights laws even when they are using state money to fund their programs.
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Outrageous, you're thinking. . . . . Think again. In the State of Illinois, a real battle is underway between Catholic Charities and the state's human rights laws. Specifically, Catholic Charities has suspended its publicly funded adoption and foster care services because they anticipate state sanctions if they were to continue refusing to serve LGBT families. They have now filed a lawsuit seeking an injunction against the state from enforcing the Illinois Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Unions Act. . .
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In many cities around the country, adoption and foster care services are farmed out to private agencies, many of them religious, through lucrative state contracts. Adoption and foster care have long been big business for the Catholic Church, and up until the last few years they have always been happy to benefit from public dollars. But now that states have begun to recognize LGBT families as part of the public, as members of the community who deserve equal treatment, those state dollars come with a catch. Publicly funded programs can't deny services to members of the public whose rights are protected by anti-discrimination laws.
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[T]he Church still wants to have its cake and eat it too, and isn't willing to give up on those state contracts so easily. In Illinois, they're fighting on both the judicial and legislative fronts. In addition to the civil lawsuit seeking an injunction, they've also been pushing hard on friendly legislators to amend the civil union law to exempt religious organizations from having to comply. So far, the legislative efforts have failed several times in committee. The lawsuit should also be a no-brainer.
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Their complaint also glosses over the very real problem that many anti-gay religious groups have when attempting to use state funds to enrich their own programs: Cherry picking. Not only does Catholic Charities want to cherry pick between the members of the public who benefit from public funds, but they want to do so in a way that would not be legally permissible for a public agency. Further, the Church cherry picks through its own religious values.
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Finally, no one is forcing Catholic Charities to take public money. They can continue to run private adoption services in as discriminatory a fashion as they like, using the Church's own private funds.
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By refusing to serve LGBT families, Catholic Charities appropriates a huge quantity of state resources and reserves them exclusively for straight members of the public. Now that the state has recognized that this is illegal discrimination, it's time for them to either start serving the entire public or to give up the public funds.