Sir – As a Christian, I don’t accept the objections of church leaders to gay marriage. The biological reality is that our species has evolved through the immensely complex process of evolution, over vast expanses of time.

As a consequence, like the rest of life, our natures are suffused with variation. From this perspective, it is unsurprising to me that there are minority variations in sexual orientation, gender identity and even physical sex.

Since God appears to have created gay people, and since they are unquestionably capable of loving relationships as deep and as profound as any heterosexual marriage, isn’t it obvious that they should be allowed to marry? I am very far from being a Bible scholar, but surely biblical revelation needs to be viewed in the light of contemporary truths which include the scientific perspective as well as human experience?

Surely, like Galileo, we shouldn’t blindly accept old ideas as axioms, but re-examine and challenge them? Indeed, when Jesus handed the keys of the kingdom of heaven to Peter (Matthew 16:19), I sometimes wonder if he wasn’t telling us just that.

Daniel Emlyn-Jones, Oxford