I can't (and won't) speak for YardenUK but for me this thread has never been about the merits or otherwise of what the Archbishop said, but about whether he has a right, as Archbishop, to express such views. Those who believe he has not belong to a long tradition stretching back at least as far as Henry II and Thomas a Becket; commonly whenever a cleric makes statements that conservatives deem to be outside what they interpret as "the role of the church" eg. social justice, there's the sort of hue and cry that we've seen over the last few days (and in Becket's case he was murdered to shut him up). As a agnostic I think the Archbishop's views are pernicious because they reinforce the view that religion has a special place in society and should therefore enjoy tax exemption and so on as well as (in this case) its own court system. We did away with that sort of thing with the Reformation