Gay NZ Man Takes Church to Court for Refusing to Ordain Him

We all knew this was coming. In this report a gay man in a partnered relationship in New Zealand is taking the Anglican Bishop of Auckland to the Human Rights Tribunal for discrimination because the diocese will not ordain him to the priesthood. Ironically, the Anglican Church of NZ is very likely to ordain open and practicing homosexual persons in the next few years (well, probably). Ironically, some people want to insist on separation of church and state to stop the church meddling in public affairs, but they will be quick to force churches to conform to state sanctioned ethics when it suits them. Maybe I’m a pessimist, but I do think that this is exactly what is going to happen more  often in the future. And eventually some government is going to cave in and set a legal precedent for it. So how do you conform churches to marry, confirm, ordain, and license people that it does not want to?