The Church of England has been confused and dishonest about homosexuality for most of the last 50 years, as it struggled to come to terms with feminism and the sexual revolution. The official line is that all sex outside marriage is wrong, and that gay people can’t marry in church. However, the definition of marriage is flexible for straight people: the church accepts that divorce and remarriage can be regrettable necessities for heterosexuals, even when they are priests or (occasionally) bishops. Meanwhile, gay churchgoers are often welcomed and are frequently married or partnered. Congregations vary widely in their attitudes but are, for the most part, no more illiberal than the society around them.

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In effect, there is one standard for the laity – which is to conform to the liberal norms of society – and a double standard for the clergy who are supposed to be celibate, even when they live with same sex partners, if not heterosexually married. It is perfectly in order for clergy and even bishops to be civilly partnered.

The official line doesn’t fit with reality among the clergy. I personally know one straight priest who has been three times divorced, several gay and lesbian couples in the priesthood, of whom some are celibate, one transsexual canon, one formerly married couple both whom are now living with same sex partners (in one case remarried) along with many entirely straight married monogamous couples.

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This position is absurd, but it is also the outcome of a long political struggle in this country and abroad in which the acceptance of gay people became the cause on which conservatives focussed after they lost their fight against the ordination of women. Like that struggle, this was something which primarily affected the clergy: if lay people disagreed with the church’s line they could, and did, simply go somewhere else.

But the situation has been peculiarly difficult to resolve because gay people were always over-represented among the clergy. The reasons for this are mysterious but the result is that the conservatives have never been able to entirely drive them out. As far back as 1994, 10 bishops were named as gay by the pressure group OutRage; all claimed to be celibate, if they responded to the charge at all. But the double standard looks steadily less defensible today.