Last month, PinkNews published a statement from the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and Archbishop of York John Sentamu to mark the 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality.

Below is a response from Keith Porteous Wood, Executive Director of the National Secular Society.

The statement from the Archbishops that you published recently has been greeted with well-deserved cynicism by many of your readers.

That is understandable when the Archbishops’ statement, mostly couched in religious language with concepts that will be meaningless to 90 per cent of gay people, somehow omitted to mention that Church doctrine still holds that same-sex intimacy, even within a committed relationship, is sinful and “is to be met by a call to repentance”.

It also omitted any acknowledgement of, or remorse for, the gratuitous hurt and indeed persecution of LGBTI+ people that Christianity has been responsible for over the centuries. Read more via Pink News