The article that kickstarted the current round of debate:

Jensen condemns sin of homosexual acts

By Linda Morris Religious Affairs Reporter
February 3, 2006

THE Archbishop of Sydney, Dr Peter Jensen, has called on the Anglican Church to declare homosexual practices a sin, defending the church's "obsession" with human sexuality.

He joined fellow evangelicals in criticising English laws recognising civil partnerships as unbiblical.

Disputes over homosexuality - including gay priests and gay marriage - have racked the church worldwide. As head of the conservative Sydney diocese, Dr Jensen has emerged as a leader of the evangelical section of the world's 78 million Anglicans.

Dr Jensen said the church was on a slippery slope if it was to weaken on the definitions of sin, and risked compromising the central message of Christianity, that of redemption from sin through Christ.

"… our culture is obsessed with sex so we should not be embarrassed with engaging with this issue. If we did not engage we would be divorced from our culture. Scripture declares this to be a matter of life and death."

His comments are drawn from notes published on the website of Anglican Mainstream, a group of conservatives said to represent 1500 Anglican archbishops, bishops, clergy and laity in several countries. They form the basis of a speech Dr Jensen gave to an informal gathering in England last month.

Dr Jensen said acceptance of homosexual practice "would be to call holy what God calls sin to be repented from".

The efforts of liberal theology to gain control of the church had gone too far and was endangering the "whole gospel enterprise of the church", he said.

Dr Jensen co-signed a letter with 18 prominent evangelical Anglican leaders "warmly" supporting the criticisms of the Bishop of Rochester, the Right Reverend Michael Nazir-Ali, that gay unions were inconsistent with traditional teaching on marriage.