More than 150 politicians, religious leaders and human rights campaigners have given their backing to the Guardian's campaign to repeal the 301-year-old law that bars Roman Catholics and other non-Protestants from succession to the throne.
The Act of Settlement 1701 is part of the legislation that shapes today's monarchy, and binds church and state. It ensures that our monarch is a Protestant, and bars them from marrying a Catholic.
This newspaper has long ar gued that the act is incompatible with the Human Rights Act 1998, and has challenged the legislation.
The list of senior figures backing our campaign for the government to repeal the act includes 72 MPs and 35 peers.
Among them are Tony Wright, the Labour chairman of the Commons public administration committee; Lord James Douglas-Hamilton, justice spokesman for the Scottish Conservatives; David Hope, the Archbishop of York; and Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster.
Senior Labour backbencher Kevin McNamara, who last week put down an early day motion to amend the act, has already collected 100 signatures.
He said: "It is widely accepted by politicians, religious leaders and lawyers that the Act of Settlement is discriminatory, but perversely we allow it to remain on our statute. Such a move [to reform the act] during the Queen's golden jubilee would indicate recognition of the UK's acceptance and tolerance of a multifaith, multicultural society."
Although the Conservative party is officially "happy with how it stands at the moment", there is cross-party support for a change to the act, and there are Conservatives in the Guardian's list of supporters.
Sir Teddy Taylor, the veteran Tory MP, said: "On a personal basis, I would not object to the act being repealed."
Charles Kennedy, the Liberal Democrat leader is also on record as believing that such an archaic and anachronistic law should be swept away.
The Act of Settlement, passed following the revolution of 1688 which unseated Britain's last Roman Catholic monarch, James II, lays down that only Protestant heirs of the German Princess Sophia, granddaughter of James I, may succeed to the throne. Those who marry Catholics are also excluded.
The act also binds the Church of England closely to the state. It calls on the sovereign to be in communion with the Church of England, to swear to preserve the church and uphold the Protestant line of succession.
"This legislation is a historical relic which has no place in plural Britain of the 21st century," said a spokesman for Cardinal O'Connor.
Those views are shared by the Archbishop of York, who is second in the Church of England hierarchy. Other bishops, including Mark Santer, the retiring Bishop of Birmingham, also believe the link between church and state should go.
But there are still defenders of the act in the church. George Carey, the retiring Archbishop of Canterbury, claimed last month that without the "spiritual underpinning of the state", society would fall apart.
That view is not shared by Professor Harmindar Singh, of the Sikh Divine Fellowship, Neville Nagler, director general of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, and the Reverend David Haslam, chairman of the Christian Socialist Movement, who all agree that the act needed repealing.
"If we are to develop a stronger understanding of what our collective citizenship and notions of equality mean we have to end the preferential treatment of the Church of England as the state church," said Liberal Democrat peer Lord Lester.
The Act of Settlement also reaffirms the common law principle of inheritance through the male line. This means, for example, that if Prince Charles had an older sister, he would still be first in line to the throne.
"Had Princess Anne been older than Charles, maybe people would be jumping up and down with regard to who succeeds as monarch," said Labour MP Anne Begg.
The historian and Liberal Democrat peer Lord Russell said reform would have to be in consultation with the 14 other Commonwealth countries which have the Queen as their head. "The act should be altered by agreement by all countries concerned, which means that what the government ought to be doing is working towards that agreement. I understand unofficially that this is the position at the moment," he told the Guardian.
A number of Commonwealth countries, including Jamaica, St Lucia and Canada, are known to support changes to the act.
Tony Blair, has indicated that the only reason the act has not been repealed or amended is due to the burden of work involved.
However, Mr McNamara and many others disagree with the prime minister's view and claim it would be a relatively simple process.