"In the UK, do Conservatives have to hire BNP members, or is it only homosexual BNP members that they have to hire?"

No has to hire anyone, but the idea of the bill is to make it against the law to be able to discriminate against someone capable of doing a job because of their age, gender, race, religious or sexual orientation. Last week the BNP was forced into accepting non-white members for the first time by equality laws - no bad thing there then. Check out the link in the second post for an idea of why it's proving contentious (a true blue paper to boot - no leftist viewpoint to muddy the waters there).

Of course, this is a problem for the Catholic Church which won't allow the ordination of women and homosexuals, and they see the equality laws threatening their right to discriminate against these two groups. Of course, you could cite theological reasons for not allowing these group into the clergy and it's not peculiar to the the RC church (after all the Taliban share the same view).

"But to demand that churches be silent on moral matters, is ludicrous."

Only to members of that church, and this is a legislative matter for a democratically elected Government, and will effect far more than religious groups rather than a moral dilemma. I've no problem with a person's personal faith or their expression of it as long as it hurts no one else. In this case, the Pope is trying to influence a decision that the will affect the rest of us and that's not on. By making this statement he invites discussion and criticism for those of us who want to live in a fair and equal society.

"The Catholic Church doesn't bother asking for a lot of stuff in the U.S., because even the U.S. bishops would feel ill at ease about crossing the church/state line."

Here in the UK people don't like being told what to do by some bloke who's never even been to this country, and we too hold the divide between church and state as one of our most cherished principles (Charles I pushed his luck too far with that one), regardless of political persuasion (sorry Ake - can't blame them commie pinko's for that one).