The Churchman Ally

I went to church last Sunday. Nice service in a small country village set in rolling green fields, It was so Church of England you could have used it as a film set. The vicar who took the service was gay. His partner was there, too. Everybody knew and no one was bothered. Welcome to the church of the very near future. It is inevitable. But we are not there yet. If there are angry voices raised in mock horror at the prospect of gay marriage, it is simply because they know they are losing the argument - not only in the country but also in the Church. One day the Church will apologise to its gay members for the terrible way it has treated them. And it has much to apologise for. For what the Church has done is allow plain and simple prejudice to hide behind a cloak of religious respectability. Worse, it has actively stoked the fires of that prejudice and influenced otherwise open-minded people towards homophobia. Gay clergy have it especially bad. My own active involvement came as a result of a gay friend of mine, Jeffrey John, now the Dean of St Albans, having a bishop's job offered to him and then having that offer withdrawn after African churches went ballistic and threatened to walk away from the worldwide Anglican family. The Archbishop of Canterbury, whom I admire a great deal in many ways, allowed himself to be bullied by an angry mob into making the worst decision of his life. I thought long and hard about leaving the Church at that time. But I resolved to stay and fight from within. And it was this fight that made me friends with the great American Gene Robinson, the first out and partnered gay bishop ever. I call him great because he is a man of huge courage, having soaked up more anger and bitterness from other Christians than most of us can over imagine. He came to preach in my church back in 2008. Outside, protesters waved their silly placards. As Gene began to preach a heckler stood up and started to denounce him, pointing and shouting. It is a scene that has made it into a new film called Love Free or Die that just had its British premiere at the BFI Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. After the service, Gene stood on my church balcony overlooking the Thames, smoked a cigarette and cried It had all become too much. For every bigot in a dog collar - and there are still loads out there, of course - there are a great many people fighting hard to transform the Church from within. And change it will. For alt bough some would have you believe that the Church always stands for the same things, this is only over said by people with no grasp of history. If there is a constant, it is the belief that love is at the heart stall things and that love is to be celebrated wherever it is found. What makes homophobic Christians so foolish is that they just cannot see that love between two people is not confined to heterosexuals. They are failing at being Christians because they do not see what is there to see and celebrate. The reason I know that change in the Church is absolutely inevitable is that, as a Christian, I believe that love is the most powerful force in the world. It may take some time. And the nearer it comes, the louder will be the critics. But they have already lost.

Why are gays so gullible when it comes to online hook-ups

FOR ME. ARGUMENTS about whether the internet has proved to be a blessing or a curse were silenced with my discovery of surisburnbook, tumblr, the single best thing ever to have emerged from the web. But when it comes to the value of intemet dating. I'm less convinced. Although it seems that I'm in the minority there - new statistics show that it has become the second-most popular way to meet partners (after being introduced by friends).

            For most of the gays l know, internet dating belongs in inverted commas and primarily consists of using smartphones to locate the nearest warm body. I've got Grindr but I don't use it much. Mostly, I like to send people I know pictures of my feet anonymously to see how they respond. I certainly couldn't ever meet anyone off it. What if I didn't fancy them in person? Even worse, what if they didn't fancy me? My self- esteem is already on a knife-edge, without being rejected by a Spaniard in I-loxton, thank you very much. It is people's profile pictures that alarm me. Grindr pictures always remind me of the flyers prostitutes (or more accurately, pimps) post in phone boxes. One currently in circulation stars my friend Naomi, an ex-glamoui model - she's not an actual prostitute.  They've just swiped her photo off the internet. So aren't the men who respond to the ads perturbed when they get to the allotted hovel and find a miserable Eastern European woman in her place?

            It must be the same for men who make housecalls based on a profile picture that is, at best. someone beautifully lit from a flattering angle or, at worst, somebody else entirely. I can only assume the reason the men concerned don't cry false advertising and scarper is down to desperation. Do the gays who post misleading pictures really want to have sex in the knowledge that their partner for the night/hour is only sticking around because they can't be bothered to get the night bus home? Grim.

            Don't get me started on the cock pictures that people send each other. 1 love a peen snap, and l understand the logic of trying before you buy, but I can't take anyone seriously who would send me a picture of their dripping bell-end before we've even met. Call me a princess, but the worst are the ones that have clearly been pre-shot and sent out en masse. Nothing says you're special like. ‘Here's a cock pic l took earlier’. Also, people say that online hook- ups are the most convenient way of procuring a no-strings shag, but surely, if you're going to have sex with someone based on physical attraction alone, you want to see them in the flesh rather than half obscured by an iPhone flash in some finger-marked bathroom mirror. What if they smell? What if you get to their house and they have an Olly Murs poster? What then?