Last week, the United Kingdom’s highest ranking Catholic official, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, resigned after accusations came out that he had inappropriate sexual relationships with several priests. At first, O’Brien contested the claims, but admitted in a statement this weekend that he is culpable for the allegations:

In recent days certain allegations which have been made against me have become public. Initially, their anonymous and non-specific nature led me to contest them.

However, I wish to take this opportunity to admit that there have been times that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal.

To those I have offended, I apologise and ask forgiveness.

To the Catholic Church and people of Scotland, I also apologise.

I will now spend the rest of my life in retirement. I will play no furtherpart in the public life of the Catholic Church in Scotland.

One of the five priests that accused O’Brien of misdeeds has said that he’s felt a “cold disapproval of the church hierarchy for daring to break ranks,” adding, “I feel like if they could crush me, they would.”

The British gay rights group Stonewall had named O’Brien their “bigot of the year” in 2012 for his relentless condemnations of gay people and their families. In response to his statement, Stonewall noted that he “didn’t find it in him to apologize to gay people, their families and friends for the harm his vicious and cruel language caused.”

Over the weekend, allegations came to light that the United Kingdom’s most senior Catholic official, Cardinal Keith O’Brien of Scotland, had engaged in inappropriate behavior with priests over the past few decades. The full details of the allegations are not yet known, but one priest alleges that O’Brien had an extended relationship with him that resulted in the need for long-term psychological counseling and others acknowledge unwanted sexual contact. Though O’Brien contested the claims, he has officially resigned from the Church, effective Sunday. He was due to retire next month anyway, but now he will not be able to represent Britain in the papal conclave to replace Pope Benedict XVI.

O’Brien has been a virulent opponent of LGBT equality, having launched a “war on gay marriage” last year, describing same-sex marriage as a “grotesque subversion.” In November, the gay rights group Stonewall unapologetically named him “bigot of the year” for his constant condemnations of gay people and their families. Just last week, O’Brien reiterated his opposition to same-sex marriage, but surprisingly suggested that straight priests ought to be allowed to marry.

Archbishop Mario Conti

Not expecting to be outdone by the many other bishops who’ve attacked same-sex couples already this month, Scottish Archbishop Emeritus Mario Conti penned a letter this week to the Catholic journal The Tablet expressing his own opposition to marriage equality. In fact, he believes the Catholic Church’s stance must “surely be worthy of consideration” by the government because it helps “promote the moral well-being of society.” Here’s how Conti framed that position:

While it is true, certainly within Catholic social teaching, that governments are not required to make all immoral actions illegal, to many it is unhelpful, unnecessary and indeed profoundly unwise for political action to do quite the opposite, namely to attempt through the law, by equating homosexual unions with heterosexual marriage, to render moral what is in itself morally defective.

So far in 2013, members of the Catholic hierarchy have already referred to same-sex marriage as “morally defective” and an “immoral activity,” and claimed that gay people don’t really exist, but if they claim to, then God obliges them to a life of chastity. And Conti’s implication here isn’t just that he wants to prevent same-sex marriage, but that his preference would be to make homosexuality itself “illegal.”

Combined with Pope Benedict’s multiple malignant statements in December, the Catholic Church’s hierarchy has established itself as the archenemy of loving same-sex families in 2013. These religious leaders provide no argument against marriage equality except their own moral judgment, but then expect the governments of the world to cater to their whims when even their own followers largely do not agree. They imagine a universe where there is no such thing as gay people or same-sex marriage, but with each passing day that false reality becomes more delusional.