With the Archbishop of Canterbury giving a series of lectures, he seems to be calling for discussion of further religious law.

The problem here of course is the ABC thinks religious laws are a good idea, so he is immediately at odds with most of the enlightened world that remembers how hard it was to get rid of good old Christian practices like slavery from the law books. The Church of England's position on slavery now is markedly different to its position before slavery was illegal.

I agree that UK law needs reform in many areas where it may come into conflict with some Islamic practice. Probably one of the first laws that should go is the prohibition on bigamy, since polygamy is widely practiced in the Islamic world, and UK law recognizes all legal foreign marriages, polygamy is only open to those who can afford to travel (not exactly a green policy). Of course in this age of equal opportunities, this means legalizing polyandry, and legal recognition of multiple partner homosexual, and bisexual arrangements.

We'll see how the Archbishop who was so keen for recipients of tax payer cash to be allowed to continue to discriminate against homosexuals on "grounds of conscience", handles that as the lectures progress I guess.

On the other hand we did at one point have a lot of discussion on cruel ritual sacrifices in the UK, which ought to stay illegal. Peoples right to believe fairy tales stops when they start having a bad influence on other folks, or being cruel to animals.

On the basic point; I have no trouble with folk upholding higher moral standards than the UK legal system requires, it is something I manage to do easily most days. I guess to an extent people can consent to be bound to additional rules, although I don't see a practical way of enforcing significant punishment on such people without them withdrawing their consent, so at that point it is back to "equal before the law (of the land)". Both parties can choose an arbitrator with shared religious values for most civil disputes anyway, which would already govern marriage which seemed to be the topic the ABC mentioned most.