Advertising Standards Authority “persecutes Cranmer”

Not many things on the world wide web surprise or even shock me but what happened to the blogger linked below did


http://www.archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/advertising-standards-authority.html

when he put the following image on his website.

Archbishop Cranmer or @His_Grace on twitter is well known as a conservative Anglican and as such puts forward a robust defence of what he sees as the tenets of Christianity and the Church of England. As expected he occassionally posts on subjects around marriage, especially the concept of marriage as betwen one woman, one man, indivisible and for life.

So it was not unexpected that His Grace might well put links to the Coalition for Marriage website on his own site.

 As their site says:

The Coalition for Marriage is an umbrella group of individuals and organisations in the UK that support traditional marriage and oppose any plans to redefine it.
The Coalition is backed by politicians, lawyers, academics and religious leaders. It reaches out to people of all faiths and none, who believe that marriage is the most successful partnership in history and should not be redefined.
The Coalition draws upon a substantial body of evidence showing that marriage – as it has been understood for thousands of years – is beneficial to society, and that changing its definition would undermine that benefit.
The Coalition’s petition demonstrates that there is broad public opposition to redefining marriage. The Coalition is committed to a reasoned and courteous debate on this issue, and will highlight any intimidation or intolerance shown to supporters of traditional marriage.

The Coalition for Marriage run a petition  in support of this view and to date has over 500,000, that's over half a million signatures. They also offer an easy way to communicate with the government via their Respond to Consultation service.


So His Grace has put the animated image above on his blog and apparently a number of individuals and groups have complained to the Advertising Standards Authority. And the ASA have responded in kind as His Grace reports "...has been sent all manner of official papers, formal documentation and threatening notices which demand answers to sundry questions by a certain deadline. He is instructed by the ‘Investigations Executive’ of this inquisition to keep all this confidential."

What are we coming to?