The Church and gay marriages

I may be a hard-boiled atheist, writes Peter Rhodes, but my heart goes out to the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams, the Catholic Church's Scottish leader Cardinal Keith O'Brien and other good clerics who are being harangued as narrow-minded bigots for standing up against gay marriage.

"The Church doesn't own marriage," sneers one critic. But it does, in a way.

For 2,000 years the Church has celebrated marriage as the union of one man and one woman. It drew up the rules. It gave us the rituals and the language. Now the Church ultimately faces being asked to marry any consenting couple.

The whole marriage/partnership system desperately needs reform.

There is a strong case for extending civil partnerships, currently reserved for gays, to all co-habiting couples, such as siblings living together, who would benefit from the tax breaks.

If we are serious about equality, that is the issue to pursue.

Forcing gay marriages on the Church looks like nothing more than the exercise of trendy political power for the sake of it.