Headlines proclaiming the Roman Catholic Church in Washington, D.C., will walk away from its social service obligations if the City Council forces it to provide benefits to same-sex couples seem to have a clear storyline: The Catholic Church would sacrifice the poor on the altar of its opposition to homosexuality.

But as is often the case, the reality is a good deal more complex.

Certainly, anyone can raise legitimate questions of justice over the refusal of the Archdiocese of Washington to provide benefits to same-sex couples. Many would see it as a matter of principle that the church do right by these couples, just as church leaders would say it is a matter of principle that they not have to violate their freedom and conscience by complying with a law that might make them provide such benefits, an action which they say (though not all Catholics agree) would go against church teachings.

A bill before the D.C. City Council, which was introduced in October and is expected to pass when brought up for a final vote next month, would make the District of Columbia the first city south of the Mason-Dixon line to recognize gay marriage. One consequence of the bill is that gay couples would be considered eligible for employee benefits like any other married couple.

"This legislation would not force churches to perform gay marriages or to change their moral doctrines, but it would require any organization with a contract with the District to provide medical benefits to a gay partner just like it provides them to the heterosexual partner in a marriage," said Father Thomas Reese, a Jesuit and political scientist. "It would also require adoption agencies to sponsor children to gay couples if the agency is under contract with the city."

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The Archdiocese of Washington contributes about $10 million annually to social service projects and has received close to $9 million in city contracts for social service work since 2006. Through Catholic Charities, the church serves 68,000 people in the city, including the one-third of Washington's homeless people who go to city-owned shelters managed by the church, according to The Washington Post. City officials said Catholic Charities was involved in only six of the 102 city-sponsored adoptions last year.

In response to the pending legislation, the archdiocese released a statement saying it expects the city would cancel its social service contracts with the church for not complying with the benefits requirement.

The City Council seems set to say good riddance.

"They don't represent, in my mind, an indispensable component of our social services infrastructure," David A. Catania, the sponsor of the same-sex marriage bill and the chairman of the council's health committee, told The Post. "If they find living under our laws so oppressive that they can no longer take city resources, the city will have to find an alternative partner to step in to fill the shoes."

It didn't have to be this way.

Just look at the news earlier this week from Salt Lake City, a bastion of conservative Mormonism, where the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints backed -- as in came out in public support of -- a pair of ordinances that bar landlords and employers from discriminating based on sexual orientation. Mormon support cleared the way for unanimous passage of the measures, making Salt Lake City the first Utah city to provide such protections for gays and lesbians, something they do not enjoy even under state law.

The key to securing Mormon support was that the measures offered what a church official called "common-sense rights that should be available to everyone, while safeguarding the crucial rights of religious organizations -- for example, in their hiring of people whose lives are in harmony with their tenets, or when providing housing for their university students and others that preserve religious requirements."

The D.C. City Council bill on same-sex marriage does not include such exemptions, though the bill was amended to exempt churches from being forced to rent a hall to a same-sex couple for a wedding -- a worst-case scenario that had mobilized opponents. "A church shouldn't have to host a wedding it doesn't want to host," Arthur Spitzer, an ACLU attorney, had told the City Council.

Despite the council's concession on that item, the sweep of the bill is such that it has led to what The Post called the most serious church-state clash on gay rights in the nation.

Patrick J. Deneen, an expert in government at Georgetown University and a Catholic conservative, noted in an online forum on Thursday that most states have religious exemptions that help to avoid such direct confrontations.

"New Hampshire provides religious organizations an exemption that, for instance, permits the provision of services without being subject to requirements that same-sex couples be provided spousal benefits," Deneen said. "This is one area that is not being exempted under the proposed D.C. law."

Both Deneen and Reese also said that the City Council knew it was challenging the church by refusing to include exemptions, and that if the law passes it will be the District of Columbia that will cancel the social service contracts with the archdiocese, not the other way around.

"It should be clear from this review of the facts that the church is not threatening to withdraw its money from the poor," Reese said. "It is simply pointing out that it cannot observe these new requirements and therefore the city will cancel its contracts. It is in fact the city council that is closing down these programs, not the archdiocese."

On the other hand, Reese lamented the Catholic hierarchy's "obsession with opposing the legalization of gay marriage." Reese also notes that the Catholic Church provides benefits to divorced and remarried couples whose relationships it does not recognize, just as it provides benefits to individual homosexual employees -- and those benefits in many cases directly assist that person's household.

In short, the City Council is spinning against the church and the church is playing a game of chicken -- and the collateral damage could hit those who can least afford it.

"Both sides need to look for compromise," Reese says. "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."

Of course, even a compromise is likely to have its critics on the left and the right.

In the wake of the passage of Salt Lake City ordinances, for example, the Sutherland Institute, a conservative think tank based in Salt Lake City, critiqued the Mormon leaders. In its view, their backing of the laws effectively pushed society down the slippery slope toward gay marriage.

"As a public relations opportunity, the LDS Church's statement before the Salt Lake City Council may assuage the minds and soften the hearts of advocates of 'gay rights' in Utah," the institute said in a statement. But, it added, "As a policy statement, it is problematic. The approved ordinances before the Salt Lake City Council are unsound in principle, clarity, and effect."


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