The Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, has called for Roman Catholics to get involved in politics and to campaign against gay marriage and is calling government plans to legalize gay marriage undemocratic. Meanwhile a public opinion survey shows three out of five people support the idea of gay marriage.
The Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, the former Bishop of Rochester, warns of a distorted "human rights agenda" which he likens to the atheist communist regimes in Eastern Europe which also suppressed Christianity by preventing public manifestations of faith - this in relation to the Christians who lost various court cases including where public servants wanted to discriminate against gay people.
Church of England Bishops are already sitting in the House of Lords (there as of right) and, of course, they belong to an organization that has recently voted against treating women as equal within its own ranks and also rejects the idea of the right of same sex couples being allowed to get married.
So we have a number of Church leaders involved in politics and campaigning - mostly it seems - to fight against the rights of others or representing churches who already discriminate against sections of the community.
People have a right to express their views as part of a democratic debate and to vote for whomever they want in power whatever their beliefs are based on. However - if churches are going to start behaving more and more as political organizations or pressure groups then other people should be free to challenge what they stand for just as we should do for any other political party or pressure group.
No one should be free to claim special privileges to discriminate against women and gay people - just because it's based on a religious belief.
In the case of Archbishop Nichols we have a church leader using a Christmas speech to argue against the idea of other citizens enjoying the same rights as everyone else - a view which is not supported by the majority of people in this country. More in the spirit of meanness than Christmas!
In what other case would we tolerate a group of leaders from an organization that does not recognize the equal rights of women and gay people as having the right to sit in the upper house of parliament and to have a vote on the what laws we live by. Clearly the churches (and the religious more generally) are given a special dispensation not to abide by the standards of the rest of society. Why is this - why are they a special case?
Of course many religious people do good things and many may well disagree with their church leaders but isn't the case that the churches are losing credibility in taking these stances? Do they really think they can provide leadership to the rest of us anymore?
We will of course be told again in the future that the churches and religion generally provides a necessary yard stick for morality and that without religion society would fall into crime and general sin. Clearly this is not true - I think it will become increasingly obvious that the churches have always taken their moral stances for the wider population and in fact they are now falling behind the rest of society in terms of a progression towards a more tolerant and inclusive community.
And look at the quality of the argument Pope Benedict XVI reiterated his opposition to gay marriage last week in a Christmas address, saying it was destroying the very "essence of the human creature". What does this mean? What is being destroyed?
We also hear how same sex marriage will devalue the institution of marriage. How can a gay couple getting married affect anybody else's marital relationships? Do they think that heterosexual couples will stop procreating once a gay couple take their vows or decide to live apart or assume their heterosexual marriage is no longer lawful and binding as soon as news of a same sex marriage breaks?
We don't need lessons from these organizations in how we view the sexuality of others or in democracy - and certainly not in equal rights. The only time we seem to hear about equal rights from the churches these days is when they plead for the right to discriminate against other people.
Again I am sure many religious people do good and brave things but the established churches are becoming less relevant as they fight for a less equal society and plead for special rights to do so.