Hospitals and schools are not "business arms" of the churches but the equivalent of public schools and hospitals.They don't exist to make a prophit. although they may have to in order to exist.
It's not me setting the terms, it's courts and legislatures, our system for enacting laws designed to bring about social justice. Now, the Catholic Church has already set the precedent by calling for laws designed to effect social justice, why shouldn't the Church be bound by them?
And what exactly is "social justice?" According to whose values? And if these values are contrary to those of the churches, should the churches abandon their values and adopt those of the people who control the government?
Conscience clauses for individual medical practitioners have long protected those who do not want to do abortions. And, there's a difference between performing a murder within the four walls of your institution, and merely following the law and giving spousal benefits to a person outside of your institution.
And suppose the law changes are you are commanded to do what the law requires? Maybe there should be law that protects business institutions of religious organizations, and then people who would otherwise be working for an institution that despises them would get the message. Do it through legislation that enacts civil unions, or you'll have judges imposing it on us the way they see fit. Massachusetts could have seen the handwriting on the wall when this happened in Vermont, if they had simple crafted a civil unions statute, that provided that religious organizations did not have to give spousal benefits, there might not have been anything for the Massachusetts SJC to decide on. Now, MA is faced with judge-created law, and its consequences.
Civil unions are legal devises which grant to two individuals most of the rights of marriage. It virtually makes marriage meaningless.
I agree that some doctors have gotten fat on Medicare/Medicaid. But most I've heard from find that the Medicare/Medicaid patients take up far more paperwork than they are worth, and other paying patients make up the slack for them. What this has to do with the article at the top of this post eludes me, however.
You spoke of the "market" as if the market determined the price of medical services. It does not. Medicare/Medicaid is too big a play for any sort of free market to function.
We give exemptions from our laws to the core work of religious institutions so they can do the work of their deities in converting people and maintaining them in their faith. I even question the tax exemption for that, but I'm willing to let the White Aryan Nations Church exclude black people from its congregations, even though I'd like their "church" building on the county tax rolls.
As for "social justice", its whatever anybody who wants to impose it on someone else says it is. Back during the Reagan Administration, the RCC was saying that social justice consisted of not building up our military, because it was taking too much welfare away from the poor. Now, some other people's idea of "social justice" is having employers pay for spousal benefits for same-gender relationships, once those relationships declare their exclusivity with at least the same commitment that the average heterosexual enters into marriage with. Does this offend the Catholic sense of propriety? No doubt, but it probably offends their sense of decency to pay spousal benefits to people who have been divorced and remarried, too. But that's the way the game gets played. Our society, at least in Massachusetts, is starting to broaden the definition of what is a committed couple.
As for law changes, you either change with it, or go out of business. That's the way that environmental law, tax law, and worker safety law all work, and the RCC has always fought hard for changes in those areas, no matter what it cost employers, either in terms of cash or philosophical beliefs.
As to whether marriage is meaningless or not, that's pretty much up to the people in each particular marriage to make that relationship either a source of strength and value in their lives, or to make it a sham that eventually is broken. A gay couple across town that either chooses to live together, get a civil union, or get a marriage certificate has no bearing on the marriage that my wife and I have. Our marriage is either sanctified or cheapened by our own behavior toward each other, no one else's relationship has any effect on ours, if we don't let it.
As for the market for medical services not being a totally free market, I'll agree. But you recognize that there is a market for labor services provided to hospitals and schools, and it is a free market, at least a far freer one. The spousal benefits discussed in this thread are a part of the compensation package that employers extend to employees in trade for their services, and there's a fundamental question of fairness when one class of institutions is treated unequally over another, with regard to paying benefits required by law. If it's just a custom in Massachusetts for a hospital or a school to pay spousal benefits, then the employer should be able to set whatever rules they want to on it.
That employer should also be willing to deal with whatever consequences that result, too. Once upon a time, before housing discrimination was outlawed, you couldn't get a Federally insured mortgage on a house in an area that had racial restrictions in the deeds.