Article (Stephen Bates): The loving gay family and the archbishop next door

If anyone knows what it is like to be a gay adopter of a child, it's the Rev Martin Reynolds. He's gay, in a long-term partnership ... and an ordained clergyman of the Anglican church in Wales. And for the last 15 years, he has been fostering a boy with severe behavioural difficulties.

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, knows all about him too: he used to live next door when he was Archbishop of Wales. The boy played with his children. He knows that gay couples can provide a loving home for disadvantaged and at-risk children. Yet on Tuesday he wrote to the government demanding that religious adoption agencies should not have their consciences challenged by being required to consider gay couples as adopters. Read more