Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

The fact is that I don’t give a damn about gay bishops

The fact is that I don't give a damn about gay bishops

issue 28 June 2003

Why is it that not only I but millions (I suspect) of my fellow-countrymen too are left cold by the dispute raging within the Church of England about gay bishops? One has only to see the newspaper headline for the eye to slide away.

It was not always thus. Such controversies used to fire many of us on both sides of the argument with passionate conviction. There was a time when I would have leapt to my laptop, determined to join the debate. Chosen as a panellist on BBC 1’s Question Time in a week when such a question was likely to come up, I would have counted myself lucky.

Yet switching on the programme last Thursday to hear David Dimbleby turn to that redoubtable contributor to Thought for the Day Anne Atkins and ask whether she thought the new Bishop of Reading ought to be homosexual, I groaned inwardly, she groaned audibly, and I thought, ‘Rather her than me.’

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