Hiltz had recently returned from the 2017 meeting of primates from across the Anglican Communion held in Canterbury, England., October 2-6. On the second day of the meeting, the Scottish Episcopal Church, which voted in June to allow same-sex marriages, agreed to accept the same "consequences" that the primates had imposed on The Episcopal Church (TEC) in 2016 after its decision to allow same-sex marriages.

'The stakes are high and the cost is high,' he told a meeting of all the churches in Sydney on Monday. 'Yet the cause is just and it is a consequence of our discipleship to uphold the gift of marriage as God has designed it -- a creation ordinance for all people.'

He added he would 'make no apology' for urging Australians to vote 'no' in the poll, which was commissioned by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to advise parliament but is not legally binding.

He recently spoke about his experience at the Primates Meeting. In the conversation, Archbishop Venables expressed his strong desire for Gafcon to improve the communication amongst the movement's members, be robust enough to attract new members, and to hold together in the face of powerful challenges to the word of God.

The Primates' Meeting has been portrayed as "good disagreement" over issues of sexuality, and that the irreconcilable theological convictions underlying the different positions can be set aside for the sake of institutional unity. But this does not reflect the reality. We are not "walking together."[3]