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I grew up in a church where you could be asked to stop coming to church if you come out of the closet and the congregation happen to know about it. The church back then didn’t deem the LGBTQ individuals fit for church gatherings. Is this by any chance right?
Most Christian denominations are quite open on their anti-homosexual positions. They aren’t required to be open-minded, though I personally think failure to be open-minded in this and similar areas is counter-productive – were I the head of a Church, I would try to be as inclusive as possible, in order to maximize the potential size of my congregation. There’s no reasonable expectation for a gay couple to fundamentally change the mind of an organization that has systematically been anti-gay. I have no interest in belonging to a religion myself, but I find it odd that there hasn’t been a new religion, based on Christianity, but friendly to groups like homosexuals, the transgender community, or other groups that are typically marginalized and excluded by the mainstream church. I understand that the Episcopalians are pretty tolerant, but maybe not everyone’s cup of tea. If something like Scientology can be recognized as a religion, surely a gay-friendly offshoot of the Catholic Church could be made to exist?
First, businesses aren’t allowed to refuse services to people based on sexuality. Religious groups aren’t allowed an exemption to that rule and in the UK the Catholic church decided to close down its adoption services because they weren’t allowed to discriminate in terms of placing children with same sex couples.
But actual places of worship are a tolerable exemption. They are places where people express their beliefs and even if those beliefs are at best out dated and somewhat distasteful to mainstream society it’s reasonable to permit people too use their own spaces to express their beliefs. Personally I don’t believe religion is any excuse for exemption to the law but I think this point is a reasonable political settlement. People who go to church do so believing they’re engaged in some spiritual significant practices and forces people’s hand in what is or isn’t legitimate in their religion is perhaps a step too far.