Which, in fact, was a conclusion Bishop Henry arrived at himself. In an interview late yesterday afternoon, he said if he was rewriting the letter, he would not talk about unleashing the "coercive power" of the state.

What he had attempted to say was misunderstood, he said. "You should see some of the hate mail I'm getting right now. . . . I'm just amazed."

Bishop Henry, in his letter, abruptly linked homosexuality with adultery, prostitution and pornography as human acts that undermine the foundation of the family, and argued for "the state . . . [to] use its coercive power to proscribe or curtail them in the interests of the common good."

He also appeared to challenge the late prime minister Pierre Trudeau's famous dictum that the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation.

"It is sometimes argued that what we do in the privacy of our home is nobody's business," the bishop wrote.

"While the privacy of the home is undoubtedly sacred, it is not absolute. Furthermore, an evil act remains an evil act whether it is performed in public or in private." In the interview, he said his only point in tying homosexuality together with adultery, prostitution and pornography was to stress that all of them, in common, undermine the fundamental status that marriage ought to have.

He said that what he meant by the coercive power of the state was that the government should not be endorsing events such as Gay Pride Week and treating sex in bathhouses as private when it's public. And he insisted he wasn't advocating "a bedroom police force. That's ridiculous."

However Bishop Henry, who has marched many times where angels fear to tread — whacking prime ministers and governments for, in his view, violating the laws of God — said of himself: "There aren't many people who stand up and say, 'I'm tired of political correctness.' And because I'm tired of it, don't try to silence me every time I open my mouth by telling me I'm a hatemonger. Because I'm not. I'm just trying to speak the truth as I see it, and I should be accorded the freedom to express my opinions and try to influence people to see things as I see them."

Calgary's Anglican bishop, Barry Hollowell, asked who gets to define the nature of the common good, and said the use of the state's coercive force rarely produces a common good.

Chris Ambidge of Toronto, spokesman for the gay Christian organization Integrity Canada, said Bishop Henry's comments were "completely inappropriate."

"I am horrified he would use a phrase like 'coercive power,' " Mr. Ambidge said. "It's completely un-Canadian."

END