Well who would have thought the Bible apparently says that sodomy is terrible, but offering your daughters for a bit of a gang bang is just fine, and incest is too.
The OT is full of strange things, and reading the history of how it was put together, translated and interpreted is fascinating. But shouldn't be used as a way to live your life. On the other hand the NT contains some really simple instructions, and makes it very clear that those are the ones to be used to live your life.
Seems to me that there is enough work to be done in following that single greatest commandment "A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another."[John 13:31-35] without dredging up obscure parts of the OT to get into a tizzy about. I can't remember much about the Catechism from when I was a child, although I remember chanting from the shiny red books prior to my First Holy Communion. Somehow I doubt that we covered any of the sexual sins aged ten. But when I was fifteen or so I took classes before Confirmation, and I don't recall using the Catechism at all - certainly we didn't discuss masturbating, adultery or homosexuality (I can't imagine much of that going down terribly well from a celebate priest to a bunch of mixed teenagers!)
Plus "render under to Caesar what belongs to Caesar" was I thought usually interpreted to mean follow the law of the land.
Reading the spiked article the line appears to be that as the Catholic church is a private institution it can discriminate however it chooses (although this would be illegal on the grounds of age, sex, race etc). But as many Catholic agencies, schools etc receive large amounts of public money, it cannot be treated as entirely private (and woudl still in any case be subject to the law). So the simple answer then would be to say that the church can discriminate (within the law), but not when in receipt of public funds, which is what happened with the adoption agencies, they either closed or disassociated with the church.
The Catholic church is a major employer, so it matters that they have this exemption, which should be for religious posts only (not cleaners, care workers, secretaries etc etc). It's strange that being an atheist or even an agnostic (personally I think I might be an apostate) would not preclude me from working in such a capacity, but having a female same sex partner would. And yet that is the other major command - "Love the Lord your God"
I really find it difficult to understand why the two biggest churches are getting so incredibly het up about women and gay people, both obviously created (and therefore presumably sanctioned) by god. If he thought they were that terrible, then why haven't they all been smote by lightning or somethign else horrible (plenty of examples in the OT).