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The Washington, DC, city council is working on a gay marriage bill. Predictably, as reported two weeks ago in the Washington Post, the Catholic Church has thrown a hissy fit:

Under the bill, headed for a D.C. Council vote next month, religious organizations would not be required to perform or make space available for same-sex weddings. But they would have to obey city laws prohibiting discrimination against gay men 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.

"If the city requires this, we can't do it," Susan Gibbs, spokeswoman for the archdiocese, said Wednesday. "The city is saying in order to provide social services, you need to be secular. For us, that's really a problem."

In simpler language: the Church is threatening to shut down its social services in the District, including homeless shelters and soup kitchens, because Gay Marriage Killed the Dinosaurs (tm). Why not? It's not like winter (and, um, Christmas, Mr. Scrooge) are right around the corner. And although I'm no theologian -- I'm not even Christian -- I'm fairly certain the Sermon on the Mount says "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, unless gay people can get married in which case poor people are on their own."

The New York Times editorial board has stepped in. Their collective heart is in the right place, but then there's this glorious non sequitur:

City lawmakers who are negotiating with the archdiocese over the language of the bill should try to settle it without acrimony — but not by abandoning the District’s equal-rights tradition or by selling out same-sex couples.

Here's my question: Are proponents of equal rights required to negotiate with all homophobes, or just the Church? I'd really like to clear this up before another bill fails.