"We recognise, of course, the need for fair and equal treatment before the law for all people," he said. However, Christians need to be very concerned indeed at the assertion of moral equivalence between marriage and civil partnerships. They are not of equal moral standing.

He added that Christians have a unique role to teach others about the sanctity of the traditional family.

Christians need to be very concerned indeed at the assertion of moral equivalence between marriage and civil partnerships. Rev. Richard Turnbull of the Evangelical Council Rev. Turnbull said: "Christians must be clear, while acting with sensitivity and care, to assert the Christian teaching that celibate singleness or monogamous marriage are the ways in which God has provided for the best moral family framework for society. We depart from that at our peril both as a society and indeed as a church."

The first gay civil partnership ceremony to take part in the UK was in Belfast on Monday amid much protest from Catholic and Evangelical Christians, with the most high profile same-sex ceremony taking place between Elton John and long-term partner David Furnish on Wednesday.

The Bishop of Winchester, the Rt. Rev. Michael Scott-Joynt, said in a letter concerning the coming into effect of the new Act, that although it was right for the Government to seek to rectify injustices faced by people in same-sex relationships, this should not be "by replicating, as the Act does, for Civil Partnerships virtually every provision that in existing law applies to marriage".

He said: To me the Civil Partnerships Act therefore undermines the distinctiveness and fundamental importance to society of marriage by effectively equating same-sex relationships with it - notwithstanding the Government's repeated assertions that this was not its intention, and that it was not legislating for "gay marriage".

The new civil partnerships law will give gay couples the same property and inheritance rights as married heterosexuals and entitles them to the same pension, immigration and tax benefits. However, unlike in Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Canada it is not a marriage.

A statement released by the Evangelical Alliance in early December stated: "The Alliance believes there can never be moral equivalence between marriage and same-sex partnerships, even if legal equivalence is established."

Don Horrocks, head of public affairs for the EAUK, said such a push for gay rights eventually takes away from the rights of those who may have a Christian perspective on marriage. He said, "It needs to be remembered that one group's rights often involves another's inequality."

Another senior British clergyman has spoken out against the Civil Partnerships Act. Rev Peter Smith, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Cardiff said, "What the Government should do in terms of public policy is support marriage rather than undermine it. To put beside marriage an alternative or what appears to be a perfectly approved legal alternative lifestyle I think does not help the institution of marriage at all."

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