I was planning to give my mother-in-law the new biography of Ronald Blythe this Christmas. Then I read a review and had second thoughts. I was aware the late chronicler of rural parish life had a bohemian side, but it seems that it was more extensive than I had guessed.
Reviewing the book in the Guardian, Patrick Barkham says that his adventurous early sex-life is related; his adventures continued in later life, when ‘unlikely opportunities arose, including a dalliance with the stand-in postman.’ Barkham writes:
‘In another’s hands, this promiscuity might be sensationalist or spark prurient judgments, but it is sensitively treated by Ian Collins, a biographer who was also a close friend (but not a lover). What emerges is an unusually intimate and affectionate portrait.’
Prurient judgements, eh? I’m your man.
The reviewer’s implication is that it is unenlightened to respond to promiscuity in a judgemental way. But the reality is that judgement is what humans swim in, and non-judgemental neutrality is just a different flavour of water. Barkham’s supposedly non-judgemental stance is a sort of judgement. He judges that Blythe’s sex life is to be affirmed – it is linked with the words ‘sensitively’, ‘intimate and affectionate’. Well, why shouldn’t it be?
The complication is that Blythe was a well-known Christian voice, a columnist for the Church Times. And Christians do not approve of sexual promiscuity. By writing that column, in which he invariably sounded like a cute sexless old uncle, he gave the impression that he was endorsing Christian teaching. So it is surely valid to feel that revelations about Blythe’s sex life might affect one’s judgement of the man, and his performance of the role of amiable Christian old gent. Christian readers are entitled to make up their own minds, without a preachy Guardian reviewer telling them not to be judgemental.
Ah, some will say, but gay Christians are exempt from such moralising. Yes, if Blythe had been a promiscuous heterosexual who posed as a gentle old Christian gent, then one might validly change one’s view of him. But the persecution of gay Christians means that their sex lives are beyond criticism. This is a complex issue – there was some validity in this argument before decriminalisation of homosexuality, but only some. And it has been evaporating in recent decades. If the Church of England now moves to the full affirmation of homosexuality, as I think it should, this must be accompanied by a fresh affirmation of fidelity and monogamy, for gays as well as straights. The old era of double standards is over.
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