Dr Rowan Williams says student unions 'fear open argument', writes MARTHA LINDEN

The Archbishop of Canterbury has condemned the "suppression" of Christian unions in some universities, comparing traditional religious views about gays with those of anti-nuclear activists.

Dr Rowan Williams said a refusal to recognise Christian unions by some student unions because of their stance on gay sex risked being viewed as "fear of open argument".

Writing in the Times Higher Education Supplement, he said no-one was suggesting banning the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) from making moral judgements about people involved in the nuclear industry.

But he said, quite often, the views of traditional Christians on gay sex were taken as "on a par" with an expression of hate.

This made it impossible for traditional Christians and Muslims to state their views without being accused of something "akin to holocaust denial or racial bigotry".

In his article, Dr Williams said any kind of behaviour or policy freely opted for by a responsible adult was likely to be challenged and sexual activity was no different from any other area of conscious choice.

To challenge behaviour may be "deeply unwelcome and offensive" in a personal sense but was not a matter for legislative action, he said.

"If disagreement is to be silenced because offence may be caused, that is not good for intellectual life - it personalises and psychologises' all conflict of ideas and denies the possibility of appropriate detachment in debating issues," he wrote.

". . . there is such a thing as offence that is and should be legally actionable, offence that so undermines basic human respect that it, in effect, denies a person's or a group's dignity and puts them materially at risk.

"But a moral challenge to someone on the grounds of their choices is a tribute to human dignity - if I challenge what you do, I take you seriously as a moral agent, a free person whose choices matter, whether they are about sex, money or whether to take a job in the Ministry of Defence."

Dr Williams's remarks come after protests from Anglican and Roman Catholic bishops over bans on Christian unions on some university campuses.

Student guilds and associations at Exeter, Birmingham and Edinburgh universities have reportedly voted to suspend Christian groups from membership or use of premises on the grounds that their constitutions or meetings are exclusionary and discriminate against non-Christians and particularly gay people.

Other university unions, including Heriot-Watt University and some London medical schools, are said to have taken similar action.