The Archbishop of York has taken a strong and disappointing lead in opposing Equal Marriage legislation in the House of Lords.

Speaking in the debate, he said acknowledged that the Church of England readily blesses inanimate objects but has not yet come to a point where it can bless loving relationships between gay Christians.

What do you do with people in same-sex relationships that are committed, loving and Christian? Would you rather bless a sheep and a tree, and not them? However, that is a big question, to which we are going to come. I am afraid that now is not the moment.

Writing in the Guardian, Andrew Brown has a powerful critique of the influence of Archbishops John Sentamu and Rowan Williams:

…they failed to listen to the weak because they thought the noisy bullies mattered more.

When civil partnerships came in, the two archbishops fought hard, along with the rest of the Church of England, to ensure that they had no religious or spiritual content at all. This was a monumentally stupid position for an established church to take, and the nation duly went ahead and injected its own spiritual contents, leaving the church looking like a whitewashed tomb.