The Anglican Church of Nigeria issued a press release in 2006 affirming "our commitment to the whole rejection of the evil of homosexuality which is a perversion of human dignity and encourages the National Assembly to ratify the Bill prohibiting the legality of homosexuality". Regarding "human sexuality", the 1998 Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops said that it upholds "faithfulness in marriage between a man and a woman in lifelong union, and believes that abstinence is true for individuals who are not known as to marriage". In response to the division following the Lambeth Conference of the earlier year, most Church of England bishops (though not together with George Carey, then Archbishop of Canterbury), and lots of others elsewhere in the Anglican Communion, agreed in 1999 on a document that upheld the human rights of homosexual people, whereas recognising and never seeking to resolve division over the morality of homosexual acts. As a consequence, archbishops from 10 of the 42 provinces of the worldwide Anglican Communion (South Sudan, Chile, the Indian Ocean, Congo, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Uganda, Sudan, Alexandria and Melanesia) declared they no longer acknowledge the leadership of the archbishop of Canterbury.
