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much indeed for agreeing to take part. I know that you wrote an article in the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement journal, number 46, dated November 1988, on an overview of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement. Could you, for the purposes of the interview, outline how you became involved with LGBT issues? When I was at Oxford I was reading theology

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but I was also interested in crime reform and I was involved in a society called Crime of Challenge and I became chairman for a short time so I thought I might end up as a prison chaplain or something like that and we had Peter Wildblood, I think that was in 1957, came to speak and he had just been imprisoned and that's how I got involved in the Homosexual

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Law Reform Society. Gosh, Peter Wildblood, there's a name in the history, that's fascinating. And you were ordained? I was ordained, I was claimed to be the first deacon of Corbentree Cathedral in May 1959. May 1959, congratulations. And you then moved to be vicar of St Luke's Charlton? That's after, I was a curate in Nuneaton and I moved to Eltham, then Clapham

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and I ended up at St Luke's Charlton in, look up there, my actual workplace. And I was, anyway that was in 72, 73 actually. And you were there for 21 years? 21 years, I retired at 60 in 94. You retired at 60, was that out of choice or out of a felt inability to move on from a post? Well I had applied for different hospital chaplaincies and looked at parishes

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around and at one stage, when I was in the news for having women from overseas celebrating Liz Canover's ordained by Bishop Jack Spong and doing gay blessings, I had to undertake at one stage, if I'd moved to another parish I wouldn't do any gay blessings or have women from overseas celebrating the Eucharist. And I was interested in prisons as I mentioned

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and our parents died and we were able to buy a cottage in Kent and by selling that I was able to retire early and buy a place in Whitstable and do hospital chaplaincy. Otherwise I could still be rector of St Luke's Charlton at the age of 81. So you retired and moved down here because of the restrictions on you moving to another parish? Yes and I did apply, the

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name went out, I was very keen to go to Brixton at one stage but that was, I never had a conversation with a bishop saying we thought you might go there but it just didn't happen. At the time Roy Williamson was the bishop and he was very supportive, he never asked me to stop doing gay blessings. But he wasn't prepared to support you in doing them in a new place?

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I don't think so, I never actually spoke about that to him. So this wasn't Roy Williamson, this was others around him? Yes there were other people, I think there were other people. So the blessings at Charlton, how did they start? Well actually it started, I was on the Council of Christian Action and Eric James asked me to review a book called, a sort of

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booklet, Campaign for Reason and I wrote an article about this and it ended up in the press, Gay Love OK says Vicar and I mentioned about the possibility of a priest blessing gay Christians or allowing people to kiss openly in the street if public opinion changed. And I was approached by two people who lived nearby in Orsham and it's all been written

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about actually by my successor Geoffrey Heskins in a book called Unheard Voices. It shows how a congregation came to accept a gay couple who moved to the church. It was in the press at the time and because of that and I was involved with LGCA and I was involved with him and I knew Richard Kirker and he used to refer blessings to me and also the Gay

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Switchboard. I performed about 31 during my time after. November 1978 was the first blessing and I anticipated the findings of the Gloucester report which asked the church to report and affirm permanent and stable same-sex relationships even at the time. As you know they have these double standards, it's alright for lay people but not for clergy.

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So the process is actually described in Unheard Voices by Geoffrey Heskins? Yes it is. He did a survey of the church's attitude, those who were against and those who were for. Only about one person left the church, one former church warden came back. So I took the church with me and I had the support of the church council. We were a very

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liberal, outward looking church, very keen on the ordination of women and I always thought the ordination of women and acceptance of gay relationships were the same, two sides of the same coin. Okay, that's fascinating. How did people come to you for those blessings?

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Well they either came to join the congregation, not many did, but they came from outside. It was just a pastoral thing. We had a daughter church, it was easier to have it in a daughter church. I had two women who actually did come to me and they wanted nobody else to come. But we had a lovely person called Peggy Denny who had been praying for 20 years for

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such services to take place. So we had people there in the congregation. It was a wonderful place to be, St Luke's, Charleston, quite unique. She came to witness but they just came and sometimes had a quiet service, sometimes you have an organist and hymns and a number of people came up afterwards to me. This is quoted in a book by Michael Delandoy on the

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Church of England saying, I wish I'd had a wedding like that with the actual liturgy of the poems. I never said it was a wedding, even though it said Vicar Marys Gays, but I've always said it was a blessing, a relationship. So was the ceremony sort of custom designed for each couple?

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First of all, I used Jim Cotter's one, affirming his little leaflet. But as time came, there were lots of liturgies came, so there's a bigger book I've got here you might mention. It's a lady Catholic, what's her name now? Oh, Elizabeth Stewart.

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Elizabeth Stewart, yeah. There's a whole lot of stuff that people could choose, you know, what sort of blessing do you want, exchange of rings, so they actually made the service and theirs was the input. Right, okay, right.

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And Geoff took that further by coming up with a form of service, you know, and how to approach it, almost like having, not quite having bands read or saying this is going to happen, but sadly, since he left, there hasn't been any blessing at St Luke's Childhood.

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Oh. We won't go into that too much at the moment, but I think it's... That was a, who knows whether the diocesan policy was... I think it's a form of suppressing it, or the person who was put, who is now a lady,

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Erica Woolf, feel she can't, I don't know. It wasn't in the job description. Okay, alright. That's surprising that, if that's the case, it's surprising that Erica doesn't do blessings, but anyway, there we are. Okay, so, and how did the preparation go then? How did you, did you do marriage preparation

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sort of, or blessings preparation? We always had a preparation, like we first of all met them and then found out about them and gave them stuff to go away and then they'd come back and then we went through the service and what they wanted was people saying poems and hymns and everything they wanted.

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It was like a marriage, even though I never called it a marriage, even though they may have said it was a marriage. And did you, when you were marrying heterosexual couples, was there anything more to the marriage preparation in terms of conversation about communication or shared values?

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No, exactly the same. Exactly the same, okay. So, I mean, did you do that? In a way, I might have spent more time with gay and lesbian couples than I did with a

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heterosexual one. Yeah, yeah. I mean these days there are all sorts of marriage preparation courses, aren't there? Yes, we didn't have that at the time, you know.

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Okay. So, it was exactly the same. Sounds amazing. I've never been approached to do a wedding. You haven't? No, that's not true. I have been approached, but the couple themselves never actually got

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themselves to that point. It didn't quite work. So, how would you see the future for LGBT relationships in the church? It's very difficult at the moment. With equal marriage, I think, you've got to campaign for equal marriage, but I think it's very sad that parish priests at the moment aren't

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allowed to bless gay relationships, say, in the church. I think it was done in London because there's a Lutheran connection. Did you read about that the other day? I didn't know. Anyway, Charles Fraser went to a church in London where, if possible, because of the

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Lutheran connection or something like that, to have a blessing in the church. Oh, okay. That's rare. As the law is at the moment, you have to change things or people might just do it because they feel called to do it and to break rules. In a way, I was breaking

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rules. I think I always said, you don't accept the law, non accepto legis, if you feel something is wrong. Right, and that was a principle that you used? Yes, it was. Even when I illegally, a woman priest came to celebrate, which was against

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the law at the time, the PCC was prepared to break the law of the church. I think if your conscience feels it's an intolerable situation and there's a pastoral need and people come to you, you must respond to their need. Right, right. And what about in society? Where do you see that LGBT...

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Well, society is ahead of the church. The church has really got to catch up with where society is, especially among young people. It's only the older people who don't accept gay relationship, but the whole climate has changed, it's unbelievable, in the last two or three years, and that's something which you have to give credit to a Tory government.

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Even though I'm not a member of the Tory party, you've got to go up to them. Yes, it's extraordinary, isn't it, that they're the ones who introduced equal marriage, yes. And did so from a very pro-marriage basis as well. Indeed, yes.

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David Cameron was very clear that he was doing this because he believed in marriage, and he is a churchman himself. Yes, he is. He goes to Mary's Kennington, and his vicar's got a place down in Whitstable. Oh, right. I thought he went to St Mary Abbots.

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Yes, he went to Mary Abbots, but he might retire, the person who is vicar of St Mary Abbots. Oh, right, might retire down here. Oh, right.

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Okay. That would be good. Right, so, I think we've covered all of the areas that I was asked to cover. Is there anything else that you want to...

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What was it about the congregation that enabled you to talk about this issue and bring this issue forward at the point in the early 80s, when the rest of the church was obsessed about HIV and AIDS? Yes, I think, I always put the case for a blessing, that if HIV and AIDS that was gay

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played was about the church, if it accepted gay people as able to bless relationships, would actually help to confront HIV if people formed permanent loving relationships, and I think people, and I did get involved in funerals because an attitude, the word went round as accepting gay people, and I think because of the pastoral needs, they felt,

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you know, with this so-called gay play, we must stand by gay people and encourage permanent and loving relationships, against the sort of feeling that all gay and lesbian people are promiscuous. Right.

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So it's taking a stand, saying I'm prepared to do this and bless relationships in the hopes that it will be loving and permanent and faithful. Yes, yes. So you talked about how your initial interest in LGBT issues came about because of your commitment to law reform. Can you say something about how that developed for

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you theologically, how that developed with your understanding of the gospel? So you were at Oxford doing a law degree. No, I wasn't doing law, I was doing theology at the time. Oh right, okay, sorry.

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Yes, but I think I, looking ahead, I read so much, there's a lot of stuff. There was Sherwin Bailey, Homosexuality in the Western Christian Tradition, and then Towards a Quaker View of Sex, looking at the biblical stories, and saying that the law of Sodom is a sin against hospitality, and affected by the 60s, honest to God. That's Harry Williams,

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Norman, Pittinger, Time for Consent. There's a lot of stuff that went on at the time. It was a very exciting period. So with all these things happening in the 60s, it made me think well, towards the Charter of Homosexual Rights, that was campaigned for a reason before the Gloucester report came out, and then when the Gloucester report came out, which they

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had done the work, it was just saying yes, amen to all the things which had happened before, only against the double standards for clergy. Right, and then the Gloucester report sort of ran into the sand, didn't it really? Yes it did, it ended up being properly debated.

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In that classic way that the Church of England has. I know, yes, you see, it's all a liberal theology, and I got involved in the Palestinian cause in 1970, so that's a form of liberal theology. So it was all gay liberation, Palestinian liberation, and then we had children of our own, we adopted black children, so we were

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involved in all sorts of issues. But my main issue is, Palestine comes first, I have lots of issues I've been involved in. No, no, so it's only one part of a spectrum. Yes, racism, the whole lot.

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All of which, yes, bends towards the kingdom. And taking on almost too many causes sometimes, but I had the backing of my wife and family, children got teased at school a bit, because, you know, your dad marries queers, but they put up with it, and I did get beaten up in Charlton Park once. It was costly, but I'm

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glad I, I wouldn't have changed anything for what I did. You got beaten up in Charlton Park? I did, yes, as a vicar who married queers, it was when it was in the news at the time. Earl's car was turned upside down, when we had, Saxon and Vosley had their 25th anniversary,

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and it got in the Pages of the Sun at the time, and the Daily Mail. We had a scene in church, somebody tried to stop the service, I let them go in the pulpit, and then they left. Actually it was a gay evangelical nurse. But this is, we're in the media a lot about what was happening at the time.

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Right, gosh, gosh, that's amazing. And then the Panorama in 1988, that was Rodney and Saxon reaffirmed their vows in Panorama. That was Tony Hibton's debate, and Runtsy was under attack, so, and they, the BBC came to the church, and the church wardens acted as witnesses, and Rodney and Saxon reaffirmed

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their vows. That's all in this journal actually, it is reviewed. So that was... That's an amazing record, an amazing record. And how do you feel that that affected the life of the parish? I mean, if you were involved, you were obviously involved in a spectrum of issues, so, though we're actually talking about LGBT issues, in terms of the life of

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the parish, was this just one amongst many? It was one amongst many, yeah, and a Palestinian called, had a Palestinian delegate, he was a Christian, came to preach, and we had lots of Caribbeans and Africans in the congregation, so it's a very inclusive church in every way. And I always said, St Luke's is quite

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unique, because it's only, the only Prime Minister, Spencer Percival, who was assassinated in 1812, is buried in the crypt. And then you look out on the Thames, the only barrier is the Thames barrier, but we had no barriers in the congregation for people to come along. Sounds amazing.

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And be included. Sounds amazing. Yeah, that's fascinating. Right, so we've talked about the theology of the congregation, the nature and life of the congregation. Is there anything else you want to add for the purposes of this interview?

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As a congregation, we used to go to Witchcraft, and did the Myers Briggs, I don't know if Oh yeah, Myers Briggs, yes. You did that as a congregation? Yes, yeah. What, sort of individually?

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Individually, but it came out, ENS, I've forgotten what it was though, more of an extrovert sensory, anyway, it's more or less outward going, and reflecting me and the congregation. Sounds amazing, sounds absolutely amazing. I've forgotten the things now.

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That's fascinating. Well, thank you very much indeed. Well, thank you for coming all the way to Whitstable. That's quite alright. So, tell me again, who was encouraging? You were talking about Eric James?

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It was Eric James, I knew him very, very well. I was on the Council of Christian Action when I did the Panorama programme, and before that, Eric Abbott, he was Dean of Westminster and he was my father confessor. Right.

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So, they were there, he didn't sort of come out publicly to say it was good, but I had people there, and a former Bishop of Horsham who was, so there were all these people around which helped a lot. When Eric Kemp was Bishop of Chichester?

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No, not Eric Kemp, yeah, well, not Bishop of Chichester, no, he was there before him, I think, we're going back quite a long time now, in the 70s really. So, these were individuals who were personally supportive? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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And kept you sort of rooted and grounded? Yes, it made a lot of difference, yeah. Because it must have been, I mean, it must be the loneliness of it really. I think one of the things that strikes me about these people who get married, the Jeremies who got

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married, you know, Jeremy Pemberton and Jeremy Davies. Yeah, yeah. But he had support from his Bishop as well at the time, anyway, you hear about it afterwards, that they're there, but they don't put their heads above the parapet, you know, you get

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support behind, but they don't sort of come out too much, but they are around, you know. And then they make, but the internet makes it much more possible to feel rooted in a much larger community. Yeah, it is now, I think it is, more people coming out and saying what they feel. The

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climate has changed, especially as you mentioned just now, among young people. Yes. Everything is changing, the church has got to catch up. Yes, yes, it does. Yeah, a friend of mine said, he's a diocesan Bishop, and he said,

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he said, my children won't come to church. He said, his daughter said, well, when you've sorted out the women Bishops thing and the gay thing, I'll think about it. Well, at least he's 50% there. That's true, yeah.

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Yeah. OK. Yeah, it's grim. Right.

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Thank you. Thank you.