Love your neighbour?

The local paper's front page last week just about blew my mind.  Most of the story was of the "regrettable but unsurprising" variety, but the twist at the end was a real kicker.  Here's how it went:

• Local church (major denomination) got a new minister last year.
• Unspecified rumours started to circulate regarding new minister and his private life.
• Minister decides that unsubstantiated rumours are bad and declares to church council that he is gay.
• Church council holds vote on whether to sack him or not.
• Church has two local districts.  One votes overwhelmingly to dismiss him, the other votes overwhelmingly to retain him.  Overall vote is to dismiss, minister is sacked.
• People from the district that voted to dismiss him speak to (ex-)minister saying that they had been advised to vote against him by council members.

Now this is all kind of standard church politics, right?  I don't think it's fair or moral or in the spirit of Christianity but since, for some bizarre reason, churches are exempt from anti-discrimination laws, that's kind of the end of the story.  Except...

• The head of the church council (the one that told people to vote the minister out, remember?) tells the newspaper that he has no problem with the two church districts having voted so differently, since "we value diversity".

Riiiiight....