The furore over gay bishops exposes a wider contradiction in society
The Church of England has decreed that gay clergy in civil partnerships can become bishops but only if they are celibate. Is this a long-lost Monty Python sketch? After previous rows (women, gay marriage), you have to marvel at how fully committed the church is to appearing draconian. As noted on Radio 4's Today programme, the church also seems increasingly "obsessed with sex". With ageing worshippers and dwindling numbers, perhaps it has noticed that the subject gets it far more attention than appeals for tinned pineapple for harvest festival.
Of course, lesbians aren't even mentioned. Generally, the church seems to view lesbians as mythical creatures of human sexuality, their very existence unproved, a bit like unicorns, only with Sarah McLachlan albums. As for gay men, one wonders why they don't just tell the church to stuff it. There must be easier ways to serve God than being denounced as a deviant every time you reach for a communion wafer.
But where would that leave gay worshippers? Moreover, why should the church keep getting away with inequality, thereby appeasing dangerous homophobes in countries such as Uganda?
This latest decision says it all. Billed as a compromise, it's really just a moral riddle that could never hope to be solved. It's not even "Don't ask, don't tell", because they are asking and they're insisting on being told.
The church is effectively demanding that gay men volunteer to be neutered, like troublesome tomcats, that they are gay without the sex. (I know that plenty of straight relationships involve no sex, but that's another story.)
One wonders, how could this even be workable: spot-checks of ecclesiastical bedsheets?; sensors attached to a nancy-boy bishop's wayward testicles?; the desexualised civil partners taking endless cold showers in the cloisters?
How about a less comfortable thought: what if this "no sex please, you're gay" deal isn't just about the church?
Indeed, perhaps we should also look at wider society, at ourselves – accept that this "be gay, but not remotely sexual" attitude may be part of a wider national malaise. Heterosexual British people have a history of "tolerating" gay culture (nice of us!), but we also tend not to consider gay men and women actually having sex or being sexual beings.
Even today, prominent gay people are often camp and cuddly, at most – smutty rather than sexual. At least that is the perception. Gay characters in films generally appear as shoulders for their fag-hag friends to cry on, rather than people who wouldn't mind a shag themselves. Part of George Michael's courage (and he is courageous) is not only being open about his sexuality, but also about the fact of his active sex life.
This goes against all the unwritten laws of mainstream (acceptable) homosexuality, which is openly gay, but also neutered, inactive, tamed. Which, when you think about it, is not a million miles away from what the C of E is suggesting.
This isn't about latent homophobia bubbling up among the masses. True homophobes tend to be out and proud – unfortunately. This is about nicer people and their naivety, squeamishness and discomfort, all those grey areas that are allowed to remain grey. This is about a climate where gay people are welcomed out into the mainstream, while gay sex remains locked in the closet.
While evidence of rampant heterosexuality is everywhere, to saturation point, this is still not true of homosexuality. In Britain, gay men are almost perceived to want their own chat show more than actual gay sex. In this way, weird as it seems, the church's position could be a crass exaggeration, or magnification, of the true British stance, rather than an aberration. If the church prefers the idea of chaste, unthreatening homosexuality, which keeps its clothes firmly on, then perhaps so do a lot of British people. They just don't care to admit it, even to themselves.
