Care homes for the elderly should discourage Christian workers who do not believe in gay rights, state inspectors have said.
They declared that the million people who work in care homes or helping elderly and disabled people in their own homes should be required to "support" lesbian and gay people.
That means they should make homosexuals "feel welcome and able to come out if they wish," the Commission for Social Care Inspection said.
The inspectorate said that people applying for jobs as workers or managers in care homes should be "assessed" to ensure they have the right attitude to gay equality.
It also called for care homes and companies providing care services to stop using the words husband and wife and instead to make gay people feel welcome by using "neutral" words like partner.
The new pressure over gay rights comes amid growing concern among churches that Christians are losing the freedom to hold to their traditional beliefs in areas like gay rights.
The Roman Catholic Church has threatened to close its adoption agencies because of last year's Sexual Orientation Regulations.
These mean the agencies will be forced to place children for adoption with gay couples.
They also mean Christian organisations or individuals cannot refuse services to gay organisations - for example printers cannot decline to produce gay rights material and churches cannot decline to hire parish halls or conference centres to gay groups.
Church of England leaders have also been deeply opposed to the latest wave of gay rights legislation.
The CSCI, which is responsible for inspecting and maintaining standards in care homes and care services, based its call for care home workers to be forced to sign up to gay rights on a survey of 92 gay people.
Among these, fewer than half, 45 per cent, said they had they had experienced any discrimination in care homes or from care workers helping them.
But the inspectorate said this meant there was "a need for decisive action from service providers".
In a guidance document it told home operators, managers and council chiefs: "One particularly difficult area is where individual staff have objections to addressing issues or equality for lesbian, gay and bisexual people because of religious reasons.
"Four of the people responding to the survey had received negative comments about their sexual orientation from staff who cited religious reasons."
The report said that under the new laws staff could not opt out of "supporting people because they are lesbian, gay or bisexual."
Support includes helping those receiving care in maintaining their lifestyles and encouraging those who prefer to keep their sexual orientation to themselves to "come out" in public.
It suggested that staff should be required to be "positive" about gay rights and said recruitment of both staff and managers should "assess attitudes around equality issues".
"It is definitely lawful to request that staff are positive about LGB lifestyles," the report said.
The CSCI called for monitoring of numbers of gay people receiving social care services.
It said that people who disapprove of homosexuality are already banned from fostering children under guidance that says "councils should take prompt action to address homophobia," it recommended. "Be prepared to discipline staff or de-register carers."
A similar hard line against "homophobia" should apply in social care for the elderly and disabled, the report warned.
Advice on "making LGB people feel welcome" means that in documents and publicity, home operators and firms should "use neutral language, for example partner rather than husband and wife."
The report called it "essential" for gays in care homes to come out in order to help them "be themselves".
However, where nobody can be found willing to come out, it advised managers to "consult with local LGB groups as people who could potentially use your service."
The advice was greeted with dismay by Christian groups.
Colin Hart of the Christian Institute think tank said: "This seems to ignore the fact that many care homes have a specifically Christian ethos. Christians have rights too.
"This is a very worrying development. This document does appear to be part of an apparatus of persecution of those with religious values."
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