Barbara Ellen: No Sex Please, You're Gay

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?

...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...

Barbara Ellen in The Observer. 

The point's been made before, but it's worth repeating.
One of the few columnists who can write about The Gays and not make me want to punch myself in the face - Fagburn loves you, Miss Babs.