THE ABC is RIGHT!

Again, read his lecture. The Archbishop of Canterbury is absolutely right! If, that is, you read his lecture and don’t depend on the pronouncements of people who haven’t read it and only want to twist his remarks to further their own ideological determination! This is vital to religious-conservatism in particular as the secular State/Courts take upon themselves the role of sole arbiter of intent and belief.
His argument is an argument that we have to have both in the U.K. and the U.S. – really in the Western world all together.
Another quote:

“I have argued recently in a discussion of the moral background to legislation about incitement to religious hatred that any crime involving religious offence has to be thought about in terms of its tendency to create or reinforce a position in which a religious person or group could be gravely disadvantaged in regard to access to speaking in public in their own right: offence needs to be connected to issues of power and status, so that a powerful individual or group making derogatory or defamatory statements about a disadvantaged minority might be thought to be increasing that disadvantage. The point I am making here is similar. If the law of the land takes no account of what might be for certain agents a proper rationale for behaviour – for protest against certain unforeseen professional requirements, for instance, which would compromise religious discipline or belief – it fails in a significant way to communicate with someone involved in the legal process (or indeed to receive their communication), and so, on at least one kind of legal theory (expounded recently, for example, by R.A. Duff), fails in one of its purposes.”