I'd prefer a gay witch to this man...

In his statement decrying the concept of gay marriage today, the unelected Ugandan immigrant Archbishop of York John Sentamu said "only "dictators" tried to overturn history". Oh really?

It is believed that a same-sex union was a socially recognized institution at times in Ancient Greece and Rome, some regions of China, such as Fujian province, and at certain times in ancient European history.

At the end of the 2nd century, Plutarch's Moralia included a debate on the merits of Greek pederasty versus heterosexual marriage. The debate points out the good and bad aspects of both forms of love in a debate between proponents of both types of relationships.

At least two of the Roman Emperors were in gay unions. The first Roman emperor to have married a man was Nero, who is reported to have married two other men on different occasions. Nero "married a man named Sporus in a very public ceremony... with all the solemnities of matrimony, and lived with him as his spouse". A friend gave the "bride" away "as required by law." The marriage was celebrated separately in both Greece and Rome in extravagant public ceremonies. The emperor Elagabalus married an athlete named Hierocles in a lavish public ceremony in Rome amidst the rejoicings of the citizens.

In ancient China, a Ming Dynasty rewriting of a very early Zhou Dynasty legend recounts a passionate male relationship between Pan Zhang and Wang Zhongxian which is equated to heterosexual marriage, and which continues even beyond death.

In North America, among the Native American societies, same-sex unions have taken the form of Two-Spirit-type relationships, in which some male members of the tribe, from an early age, heed a calling to take on female gender with all its responsibilities. They are prized as wives by the other men in the tribe, who enter into formal marriages with these Two-Spirit men.

In Europe, gay unions continued until Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. A law in the Theodosian Code was issued in 342 AD by the Christian emperors Constantius II and Constans, which prohibited same-sex marriage in ancient Rome and ordered that those who were so married were to be executed.

Whose history, exactly, Mr Bishop? Whose dictat?

Once and for all, why on earth can't we have a government that will finally publicly remove these bloody antediluvian bishops and their pointless bigotry from the establishment of this supposedly free 21st century country? This is a man who holds a position of some importance in the House of Lords thanks to our anachronistic constitution - and yet believes in witchcraft, for f*ck's sake!

I despair.