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So, first of all, could you tell me a bit about your background, your childhood and where you grew up? I was, I came into the world six weeks early, at two and a half pounds, premature birth. And my father was given the option of, do you want your wife or your child?

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And he said, my child, my wife, rather, yes, of course that's a bit of an omen for the relationship that developed later on. But I was brought on six months, six weeks early by an adventurous pioneering GP. And so it was a precious, fragile thing, which I think was very important towards my formation

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because my mother was very overprotective for probably most of my life and she died just a few weeks before 90. Parents were little family grocers, grandparents the same. So it was very much a provincial town upbringing.

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I guess the family script, I was soon to understand, was work hard, other people come first, the customer's always right and a life of service to others is what I would probably have put on my parents' gravestone so I'd had my way. As I reflected, my mother was very protective of me, understandably from this fragile beginning,

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long before the days of incubators and so on. And father, whose own father had died when my father was six years old, probably hadn't much experience of fathering, so he seemed to be a distant father, although in latter years I realised that he loved me and was batting for me, but probably had a counterbalance

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to my mother's overprotectiveness so he would say, well let him go, let him experiment. I suppose all the oughts were there, I must, my duty, what was expected of me were dominant so I was a good goody two-shoes I think, was quite a successful fish in the little pond of the primary school, put into the cubs at seven and eight and on into the scouts and

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senior scouts and rover scouts, into a church choir by accident almost, because my parents were not people of faith that I knew anything about, I used to drag them there for harvest and Christmas to hear me singing, but those were two of the important influences I think on my life externally from the family.

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The discipline of being in quite a high-powered choir of singing twice every Sunday and three practices in the week. Was this the Anglican church? This was the local Anglican church, yes, very much a middle-of-the-way Anglican church we

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seemed then, and I particularly, once I got to secondary age, became a very keen scout so all the teachings of loyalty and helping others were being reinforced with that and of course I was getting them at home where I found my parents were absolutely devoted to the customers who they served, there was no question about wanting profit, the people

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were there to be looked after. And I managed to get through to grammar school then, of course we were still in the age of the eleven plus, and suddenly began to flounder, I think it was a big fish in a small pond in the primary school and suddenly I was a little fish, petrified of other people, only

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a child. I certainly didn't achieve my potential at school, but reflecting back I can see from those early, immediately pre-adolescent and certainly once puberty came, I think the gay sexuality was under the surface all the time and was making a difference, but of course

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it took me many years to begin to understand this, let alone accept it and reflect on it. My horizons were pretty limited to Devon, I'd hardly been outside the county I suppose until I was sixteen when I was sent to Finland on a scout exchange which opened my horizons a little, but by then my future had been decided, my father wanted me to go into a secure and

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comfortable job with a pension and had arranged for me to go into Lloyd's Bank. So at the age of sixteen I left school with the option of going to the sixth form but the bank manager thought it would be better if I went in and was formed by them. Three difficult years I think because reflecting back the sexuality was under the surface all

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the time but I didn't have any awareness at all about it. I now know that I had no fantasy, it was anything but male, I can honestly say I've never fancied any part of a woman at any time all my life, but of course when I had no awareness then it must be difficult for generations to come and even now for friends in their forties

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and thirties and twenties and teens it's difficult for them to understand how ignorant we were up until the 1960s I suppose when it began to seep out both through secular channels and a little bit within the church channels that the word could be mentioned. Of course the word gay wasn't brought over from the States I think until about the 1970s.

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All I knew was that a couple of teachers at school and a Scoutmaster had all been caught fiddling with the boys and had gone to prison and one had committed suicide. That was the only model that I really had so I had no way of putting together that the thoughts I was having of attraction towards people of my own sex was anything to do with

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me or with being gay and some fifteen years later when I came out of a divorce and went into probably the most significant bit of therapy I've ever had, three months before and three months after we were divorced or separated, I found myself describing this experience, this period of between about seventeen and twenty-five I would have said,

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as though I was in a funnel, a metal funnel which was greased on the inside and the heterosexual normative world was climbing out over the top of the funnel and I was climbing up this funnel where everyone in the community wanted me to go. I was saying how in therapy at about the age of twenty-five, twenty-six, I was reflecting on those early developmental years,

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particularly the ones of my late teens and early twenties, that it was like being in a greased metal funnel and the conventional way out, the norm, the heterosexual way was to climb up out of the funnel but I found myself slipping down into the spout at the bottom which was clearly the gay route that I was destined to take. That was where my natural orientation was,

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although at that point I'd only just begun to have that awareness. It was a very vivid description of the feelings I had coming from this conventional little family of trade, meeting when I was twenty-one and my future wife was eighteen, the minister's daughter and the minister, her father a congregational minister, was someone who I'd come to admire a lot and he

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became a bit of a mentor and he was one of the people who were quite influential, now I look back on it, in helping me to understand that I might have a vocation to ordination. In that situation, as we became friends, the local community, knowing that by then I was a candidate for ordination, and the local congregational church members, saw it a marriage made in heaven,

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respectable grocer's son, about to become a clergyman, meets the daughter of a congregational minister, it's all made in heaven, and lets clap them all the way. Externally, that was all the pressure systemically around me, from family, friends, the community, that was the route everyone was taking, wasn't it, in their early twenties, boy meets, gets engaged, gets married.

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Internally, there was a growing awareness, probably brought on most powerfully for me, when I went to theological college, to King's College London, and for the first time came across people who clearly had a gay identity, it wasn't called that then, the word hadn't been invented, but there were people that were shrouded in innuendos, and I was titillated by this,

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looking back I'd not only had my secret internal fantasies, that I saw the young boys and the scouts in short trousers, and all these were the things that stimulated me, now it was the conversation that was going on, and the camp reactions, that was gradually beginning to stir an awareness, so I looked around, and here I am now, 22, 21, 22, 23, looked around for any literature

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I could find, that would give me information, and there simply was no literature around. I remember the earliest document I found was a pamphlet produced by the Quakers, towards the Quaker sects, which was the first time anything, certainly within the Christian domain, came out addressing the subject, which of course was very accepting from their perspective.

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On the secular side there was only medical books you could get a hold of, which generally took the line of it being something which was marginal and abnormal, and of course what I was getting through my theological education, was a reinforcement of all the things that would have happened through the Sunday school, from the church choir, through scouting,

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of course it was all wicked and sinful and wasn't even talked about. So internally there was an extraordinary struggle going on, and within myself there was a splitting going on, there was no doubt about that. A crucial moment happened in my second year at King's, when I was 22, 23, driving back from a boys club in East End that we used to sponsor, sitting in the back of a mini car

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on the embankment under Cleopatra's needle, the man next to me, a student in his third year, the president of the faculty thought he'd grabbed my hand, and that was such a blissful moment, I didn't know what it was about but it was what I wanted, and there started a little flirtation and a little affair with this person, very secretly, which probably went on for about six, seven weeks

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before I couldn't hold the dishonesty and the secrecy, and I went to my mentor, who was then the deputy dean of the college, he was my confessor and the person that I would share all my secrets to within a spiritual dimension, and I poured out my heart to him saying here I don't know what on earth to do, this has happened, and as you know I'm engaged to be married,

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and I was told don't worry Geoffrey, you'll find this is absolutely normal at this stage of life here with the whole single sex company of people, when you get married these feelings will go away, at a very deep intuitive level I knew this was crass advice, and within a couple of months I went to the dean of King's, something you would never do as a student unless there was dire trouble,

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poured my heart out to him and received exactly the same advice, and never mind Geoffrey when you get married it will all go away, so on I went back that long vac to talk to my fiance, her family, went on holiday with them, and still was aware that I had these attractions, and there were a couple of students at King's that I know I was falling in love with, I could have that conscious

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awareness, but always knowing that this was only transitory, so this was part of the splitting going on was it, you mentioned splitting, yes it, I would not allow, I understand it in Freudian terms and my defences were so strong, that it was so frightening to accept this was my reality, that I pushed those down into the trap door of my conscious awareness, and although they were

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constantly there, and I think they were never too deeply buried, because they were knocking at the trap door all the time, because it was such a life of a period of history, when you showed deference to your elders, and within theological setting you obeyed your superiors, I towed the line, but I really did believe it would go away, and allowed myself to continue down the path to

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marriage, and was married at the end of my time at King's London, I had a year out preparing to go on to a fourth year theological college, was married during that year, how old were you then, and then I was 25, yes I was 25, and we, I was dreading the first night of marriage, because there'd be no sexual, and within the mores of the church then, of course that was forbidden,

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that you shouldn't have sex before marriage, which I at some level of awareness was delighted about, and although my wife got rather hot a number of times, and I would remind her that we were of course good Christian people, and shouldn't be doing anything like this, but I was dreading, I know, that night of the, the first night of the wedding, but knew that was my duty,

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and so got on with it, and it was probably six months into the marriage when I realised I was still actually quite madly in love with the person who'd been the best man at my wedding, he was a fellow student at King's, a physicist, an atheist physicist as it happens, and that awareness that I had been given false information by those people I trusted within the church,

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and it was a clear moment on, on Good Friday in fact, in my last year, the fourth year of King's, when we were preparing for the last step of ordination, ordination coming in the following June, when during a three-hour service on Good Friday, I paid no attention to anything that was being said by the people conducting the service, and had my private rage with God, that how could

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he do this to me, here I was totally betrayed by him, here I was trapped in this marriage, we'd been trying for a child and my wife was pregnant, and I was about to be ordained in three or four months time, and all I can say at the end of that honest exchange and outpouring, I did receive an amazing peace internally, and I think I probably realised at that moment it

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wasn't going to change these feelings, but I was going to go forward and resolve to be a loyal husband, a good father, and a loyal priest. So we went on to a curacy in Chesterfield in Derbyshire for nearly four years, where I managed to remain loyal within my marriage vows, but was constantly aware of my inner feelings, and discovering that there were other priests

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in exactly the same situation, it just seemed to be something that was accepted, and you just got on with it and made the best of it you could. It was a tough parish, and my wife became quite depressed, she had postnatal depression, I found myself being not only a curate with a very heavy workload, postnatal workload,

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I was the principal parent for my child when my wife had this depression, I found my wife was struggling socially, being in a tough working class parish, and I don't know how I quite got through those four years. Towards the end of that time I had a mysterious illness which lasted for a month or two, it kept me in bed for a good month with the temperature, nobody could

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discover what it is, various consultants came and saw me, and no one considered it, even thought about it, being psychosomatic, apart oddly enough from my father-in-law who visiting me did ask me if there was anything worrying me, and I did say then with all honesty that I didn't think there was, but to me clearly now this was a moment when the volcanic force that was

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between what I was having to repress and the reality of the life I was having to lead had come to a point where it came out in this mysterious psychosomatic illness which eventually passed, and I suggested that we should possibly go for a stint or I should go for a stint as an RAF chaplain, which seemed to be an easier life, and of course I wasn't conscious of the

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male environment, though I'm quite sure that was in my unconscious thinking, my wife thought that would be a good thing, and we went off and started that new career. I remember my first review at the end of the first year when the station commander told me that I was extremely good with the men, and looking back on it he was really right, I mean I took to it like a duck to

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water, and in my second year, third year of a successful career, working mainly with young people, apprentices first and then young officers, which was extremely successful, but pastorally, I was posted to an unaccompanied tour, whereas the family couldn't come, to an island in the families, and although I knew this was going to be tough on my family, I also knew that this was

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going to be manna from heaven really, and I went off and did that, keeping in touch then only by sending letters to my eldest child, my second child was born just before I went, because I was too young to know me. During then, I had a very clear understanding I think that my sexual orientation was gay, and yet I still was deeply committed to my family, and returned with all

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intentions of keeping that facade going. While I was away, my wife became very depressed, she'd gone back to her parents, and of course the balloon went up, she left the house, she wouldn't spend another night there, and the next day we drove back to her parents, which started a six month separation, where we tried to confront the issues.

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I had to share this with the RAF, that we were separated, and everyone wished us well to come back together again, as far as the world knew, it was just we were having a marital dispute. I wrote to this other chaplain in Germany, told him what had happened, and as a result he telephoned and simply said as a priest, we must never again meet, your marriage is absolutely sacrosanct,

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and that was the end of that. A few weeks later, I had a visit from the special investigation branch of the Royal Air Force, who had tapped that telephone call, all calls were tapped out of Germany once a month apparently, they didn't know what on earth was going on with this extraordinary conversation between two chaplains. I was honest with them and said that yes, we had

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met, we'd fallen for each other, I had realised it, told my wife, and this is what had happened. I was asked a direct question whether there had been any physical involvement, and bearing in mind this was 1971, coming out 1972, I knew that if I had said there had been any physical involvement, I would be in civilian clothes within 12 hours and out of the Royal Air Force.

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Because gay people were not allowed in the armed forces at that time? Immediate discharge. And I was investigated for two or three months, nothing else could be found against me, no other signs of this, and it was decided that, like, I hadn't done anything,

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so I couldn't be discharged, but they thought it would be best if, whereas my contract was for six years, they took the five-year point, we mutually agreed that I came out because my psychological state had fallen below the acceptable levels. And I went through this bizarre medical at Air Ministry where I had A1 against all categories of my physical body and my mental health,

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but on my emotional stability I was marked down, so I came out medical out of the Royal Air Force. And that was because you were gay? Because I was gay, yeah, but because I was gay and, well, all I'd said is that I was questioning that I might be gay. I see. And there was no, as far as they were concerned, there was no physical

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activity at all. So hence the emotional instability? Absolutely. But not the mental illness? Absolutely, absolutely. Because at that time it would have been regarded as a mental illness as well. So I was able to retain my full rank in retirement if I wanted to, and I got my miserable £2,300 gratuity. And during this period I was also talking with my

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wife about the future. And I think this was the time when I most understood what the therapeutic world calls self-deception, when I really told myself after she'd asked me the question, I can only go back with you if you're 100% heterosexual, and I had really pointed myself, but I really did believe that I must be heterosexual because I was missing my

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children so much. I was so gutted. And it's very difficult to relay this to anyone else, that how deep this was, and it ingrained in me my bond with my children, and it was hurting me so much just during those six months to be separated from them and having to visit them these ridiculous days out on a Saturday. So we went back together for a trial

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period for four or five months, and during which time I was offered a job in the Oxford diocese to be rector of four country parishes by a very accepting bishop who knew the whole score, was supportive to me and supportive to my wife and the children. And he told me, and bear in mind this was in 1974, that I could work in his diocese as a gay priest, and I could work in any of six

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other dioceses in the Church of England, all of which he gave me the names of. We came back together and there was great rejoicing with parents, of course, our parents, with the children, with my former wife, but it was very clear in those two years that at home there was a volcano under the surface, it was the elephant in the room that wasn't being spoken of,

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and although neither of us had any other relationships during that time, it was more and more clear to me that this isn't where I should be. And interestingly, my wife did insist during that period that my GP, who was a friend of ours, referred me to a psychiatrist to check that I was really heterosexual. And I saw the psychiatrist

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in the outpatients department in Warmford Hospital in Oxford, and just so happened, a man called Bancroft, who with his wife, who was also a psychiatrist, unknown to me, had written a paper which became an important book in the medical world, which was the first time the world of psychiatry was to change the designation of homosexuality being a disorder,

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and they were, just by luck of the draw, they were on the vanguard of that mercifully, totally changed attitude within the medical world. And after a 10 minute, quarter of an hour interview, he said, well, all I can say is that if it's possible for you to stay within your marriage, you'll have a much easier life in this hostile world outside. But if it

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isn't, and from what you say, I don't think it is, you have my very best wishes. And that was the final, I think, moment when I realised this was the moment of truth and honesty. And in the first place, I didn't quite care that we must separate. And within the two years of being in those parishes, we did. At first, I was going to, before the parish knew we were going to finally separate and divorce,

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I was going to try and escape, because then it was totally unacceptable for a respectable parish priest in, certainly in the Cotswolds, to be divorced without anyone knowing, but fairly in a circle with the other issues around. And I was going to go outside of the church, I've been offered a job directing a national charity, but mercifully by,

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one might say, the accident, but actually the wisdom of my bishop sending me on a very important training course for a month, that I realised that I love the parish, they seem to love me. And I withdrew that acceptance of the other post to the Bishop's Delight, I must say, and stayed on for six very happy years as a divorced priest. I think during that period,

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like a little ripple, the knowledge of me really being gay trickled out, certainly amongst, but it was never spoken of amongst anyone, the wider congregation at all. During that time, and I'm absolutely coterminous with it, immediately after I was divorced, or as I was in the process of separating, I met another priest, and that probably, I would say,

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has been the true love of my life. He was married, he describes himself as 100% gay, living in heterosexual marriage, and we had the most wonderful relationship. He came to be rector of the neighbouring five parishes, we ran the total of nine parishes together, we were the youngest clergy in the deanery, everyone thought we were the bees' knees,

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bringing in the new world in ecclesiastical circles in an area which had never heard of liturgical government, synodical government, the liturgical movement rather than synodical government, or certainly women's ministry. And we were on the vanguard, we were having this affair, there's no other word for it, totally accepted because no one even thought that could be the

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case. I became very close to his wife, he had three children while he was there, and I used to babysit for them, my mother used to babysit for them, and it became the elephant in the room in the internal circle. But I found that the tension of living dishonestly in that, when it was clear that

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he wasn't going to move out of the situation, was too much. And I think by this time, we're now going into 1982, I was ready to be more open about my sexuality. And so I went to the bishop, a new bishop now, who didn't probably knew from all the notes, we'd never discussed the gay issue, he and I, but I said I thought I was ready to return to inner-city work, which I

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very much felt a calling to, where I wouldn't, where I could go where I wouldn't go if I had my children living at home. And within a few months, a post came up in the East End of London as director of one of the old university settlements, which required a Christian priest to lead it, and I found myself going to start this new life.

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And it is extraordinary, because it's only been recently in writing a short memoir of my life that I've been able to look down on those decades of adulthood, half a century of adulthood, and from that perspective, I could see the links which I would want to describe where the divine finger was involved in some way. And I no doubt that this was one of the

00:33:15.400 - 00:33:45.020

important links was this movement to London. And the place I went to was one that I was shortly to discover had an enormous history of homophobia, where a very important and nationally esteemed warden, who'd been there for 30, 40 years, had been tried at the O'Bailey of its activities with young adults and sent to prison. And this was 20 years before, and the whole place

00:33:45.020 - 00:34:17.680

was shrouded in shame. And I discovered this on the day of my interview, when it was really too late to withdraw. And I do remember reflecting to the heavenly realms, well, what on earth am I doing here? And now, reflecting on it all and writing about it, I stayed there for 18 years, I can see how part of my role was to redeem that situation. And I went on to have a new relationship,

00:34:18.340 - 00:34:44.380

a partner for six years, who lived openly with me. We confronted the whole of the Board of Trustees about this. I was a member of the Deanery Chapter, the Andercombe Deanery Chapter, we confronted the whole Deanery Chapter at a time without, just by being and just naturally acting as a couple. I, of course, we're going now into the 1980s and the middle of the 1980s,

00:34:44.420 - 00:35:12.520

when there was a great ferment in the wider world, certainly in the secular world, but also in the Christian world, and I was becoming involved almost in the gay Christian movement, by joining the counselling group, which was then at quite a tangent with the main organisation, because we tried to stay outside the politics. And I often used to think I was not doing enough for the gay

00:35:14.660 - 00:35:43.920

cause by not being too public about it. Interestingly, when the first National Secretary was appointed to the gay Christian movement, and it was before I, just as I was about to leave my parishes, I had wondered whether I should apply for the job. And by chance, I had written to the editor of Gay Times, a man called Richard Creed,

00:35:44.200 - 00:36:05.520

who was a solicitor. He'd written a very interesting article about the professional people coming out or just getting on with the job. And I wrote and shared my dilemma of whether I should leave the church completely. And his advice was very simple. He said, well, I've usually found that professional people are best to stay in their profession

00:36:05.520 - 00:36:31.120

and just be honest. And I'm sure that was influential on me when I decided to stay within not parochial ministry, but non-parochial ministry. And another wonderful quirk, another divine finger, another bit of synchronicity, however you want to describe it. Some 10 years later, when I was sending out the usual appeal letters that you do from a

00:36:31.120 - 00:36:59.040

national charity, we had started the first HIV AIDS project in East London. And I sent to this small charity down in Somerset and found that the chairman of this family trust was a man called Richard Creed. And I put a covering little handwritten note saying, I don't know if you were the Richard Creed that I wrote to some 10, 15 years ago, but if you were, I'd like to thank

00:36:59.040 - 00:37:36.640

you for that because, and of course it was. I think it proved so right that I just continued the best job I could, large organization employing 45 or so people with probably up to a hundred volunteers and dealing with thousands of people a year over a great number of sites. And without making any fuss, we came in line with all the national legislation by then that we were an

00:37:36.640 - 00:38:00.540

equal opportunity employer. It was an offence even for a board member of the board of trustees to discriminate on the gay issue. And I suppose out of that 45 staff member, we probably had about 10 who were gay, a number of them in partnerships. And we just got on with the sort of life which immersively by, and we're now talking of in 2015, it has been totally accepted outside of the church

00:38:00.540 - 00:38:35.500

for the last 10 or 15 years. And I think that we were just doing it. And my reflection of those 18 years, which were blissfully happy times in terms of job fulfillment, was that a bonus for me was that I could be honest about my sexuality and help others to be the same. Not without its tussles during that time, because I had a number of tussles with bishops, and some, three or four

00:38:35.500 - 00:39:04.800

of them very accepting and understanding, and three or four of them very un-understanding. And I had to face the issues with them. I went through a lot of struggle within my own family when they're teens, when one of my daughters, particularly at the influence of her mother, who'd become an evangelical Christian by then, was estranged from me for a good six or 12 months because

00:39:04.800 - 00:39:32.040

she was caught up in a fundamentalist view of the Bible. Of course, she's now gone on to be a closest of friends, and well, with both my daughters, we've laughed about it all. Probably from when they were each 17, and there was three and three quarter years between them. And by coincidence, I was going out to a father and daughter dinner each time with them as they

00:39:32.040 - 00:39:51.960

were coming up to 18. And each time the question came up, and we talked about it by then many times, but we reviewed the whole business of how life had taken us, what it was like being gay, and so on. And each time it just so happened, each daughter had said, well, really, Dad, you shouldn't have got married, should you? And then there was a grin, and then, well, I'm glad

00:39:51.960 - 00:40:16.800

you did. Because they wouldn't be here if you hadn't. They wouldn't be here if I hadn't, nor would the three grandchildren they've produced, and we wouldn't all be living in the same village as we are now. So it is a happily ever after story from that point of view. Yes. What's your view on the changes that have taken place in the church and society

00:40:16.800 - 00:40:50.360

over the last 40 years? I think I'm absolutely delighted and surprised at the way society has moved as quickly as it has in the last 20 years, I would say. So from the beginning of the 1990s, I think, was when the main legislation was coming in, and the political scene was changing. And I think,

00:40:51.900 - 00:41:15.420

for me, it was symbolised really within the Conservative Party when Margaret Thatcher introduced the 1928 clause, and was really quite militantly anti any gay subject being discussed in schools and so on. And then do you think that within the space of a couple of decades, decade and a half, David Cameron could come along and be the first person in the Conservative Party,

00:41:15.520 - 00:41:46.760

really, who advocated from the top as Prime Minister that they should follow. And I think that it seemed to fall like a pack of dominoes then politically. And at least it was rather, I think, like the glass ceiling with the acceptance of women and indeed with ethnic minorities. One has to add the caveat that although on the surface, there's no question

00:41:46.760 - 00:42:18.700

about equal opportunities for gay people and all the same rights within secular society. There is still, it's still the elephant in the room on the higher promotional lines in most professions. There is no doubt, I mean, it's interesting the person who was the chief executive of BP, wasn't it, who kept up the facade of being heterosexual and has

00:42:18.700 - 00:42:45.140

subsequently come out as gay and spoken and written quite clearly about how he could only reach those levels within a national or international corporation with the facade. So it's been, it's changing all the time. And I think when we see, and we've already seen ministers of state declaring that they're gay, perhaps when we have a gay Prime Minister,

00:42:45.400 - 00:43:12.000

when we have a member of the royalty that accept they're gay, these are the final signs. And how about in the church? Are any of the bishops openly gay? Oh my goodness, yes. We remember, don't we, in the 1990s, I think it was that Peter Tatchell managed to out some 20 or 30 with banners. And I knew most of the stories then of behind these

00:43:12.000 - 00:43:38.660

bishops. And I've known a few myself. I once remember in East London, listening to two of our clients, they happened to be people that were living with AIDS in a project. We had some 120 men living with AIDS in a project that we were running there. And I was synchronously doing the washing up while these two lads, they weren't more than 19, 20, were chatting together.

00:43:39.780 - 00:44:03.840

They were both fairly promiscuous in East London. And one of them started describing a bishop he'd had on Wanstead Flats. And I realised he was talking about my area bishop, which I'd had great suspicion for. He had no idea I was listening. He had no idea really. I was ordained, I think, even. And many, many of gay men, gay priests of my age and generation will tell similar

00:44:03.840 - 00:44:33.840

stories, the hypocrisy and the double life. And it saddens me enormously that, as I reflected earlier, my own diocesan bishop in 1972 and 73 was able to tell me that there were six bishops who would accept me openly and I could live. And it was important he said that when I finally separated my own wife, that you can live in your rectory here with anyone that you form a permanent

00:44:33.840 - 00:45:01.440

relationship with. And these are the names of the six other diocesan bishops who could do the same. And sadly, now in 2015, we couldn't say that. So it has been retrogressive in the church, but we know that's the political scene within the Anacon community. And also probably more, I think, myself, it's identified by the fundamentalism that we see in both ends,

00:45:01.440 - 00:45:29.140

extremes of the church, in the evangelical charismatic end and also in the Catholic end, that if you need to adhere for your own personality compulsions, your fears, to something which is so black and white and rigid, and then it does, whether it's your fundamental about the biblical interpretation, literal interpretation of

00:45:29.140 - 00:46:01.040

scripture or the literal interpretation adherence to doctrine on the Catholic side, then that's the position you take. And you can go into this position of splitting where you can hold that external adherence while internally you can know your own or other people's sexual orientation. And it's very, very sad. And I'm not really at all optimistic at the moment in 2015,

00:46:02.740 - 00:46:34.120

unless we take a line of saying that within the Anacon communion, different provinces, different countries are at different stages of development and accept that we live with this dualism. Yes, that's almost like a parallel with the dualism you had in your life. I noticed that you said many, many times, you talked about all honesty and honesty, honest came up lots of times

00:46:34.120 - 00:46:56.820

in your account. And of course, you've written a book called An Honest Life, Faithful and Gay. Yes. And that's been very important to you, hasn't it? To be honest. Yes, it has. It was interesting. There was a review done of the book in Quest, which was the Roman Catholic equivalent to the lesbian and gay Christian movement. And the person who did the

00:46:56.820 - 00:47:24.420

review, I don't know, had unfortunately totally misread something which I said. And he had said in the book, and it was a very sore point to me for the very reasons we're illustrating now, that it was a result of being found out by the RAF that I had to come out and accept myself, which was totally wrong. I mean, quite clear. It was my own personal integrity that caused me to

00:47:24.420 - 00:47:50.280

tell my wife and to tell this other priest with whom I was starting a relationship. And that started everything being acknowledged within myself and with my family circles. It was only the coincidence that it was then overheard by tapping of telephones that the RAF got involved. Yes. And I think it's that struggle with your own integrity that comes out in the book.

00:47:50.540 - 00:48:19.760

Yes. I have mentioned I think once in the book, an old priest friend many, many years ago, I mean, 20 years ago, used to complain that I was always on about the gay issue. And I mean, he interestingly is a gay man who once made advances at me and is now in his early 60s, decided to get married. But that's all another story. It all fits the pattern. But he had said

00:48:19.760 - 00:48:45.500

at that moment, honestly, to me, that he'd suddenly, I've been talking about my father to him and how when I mentioned the possibility of being ordained to him, he had said, you're a stupid fool. They're all a lot of bloody hypocrites. Now, he'd been a grocer for 40, 50 years in this little provincial town. And he had watched the churchgoers come in and out,

00:48:45.780 - 00:49:11.920

ordained and lay. And he saw the lives they had. He saw the crooked tricks. A lot of them did through the local council. And he'd seen it all behind his grocery counter. And he just, he was a person of great integrity. I remember as a cocky teenager of about 17, pointing out to him that he was hardly making any money enough to live on. And why didn't he sell the business,

00:49:12.320 - 00:49:32.280

get rid of the premises and do something else, be far better off. And he just laughed at me, of course. At his funeral, when he was 70 and I was ordained there in my collar, when I was rector of those four parishes, all sorts of people had turned out from behind the woodwork at his funeral, little old ladies, little old lonely men. And I thought you didn't

00:49:32.280 - 00:50:03.040

have a business, you had a ministry. And that you were there caring for these people. That's what he did day in and day out, boringly, not making money. And yes, I hope that some of his integrity, and he would see through, he had an amazing way of seeing through pretense, particularly amongst the classes, I think, that it was, I imbibed that from him more than anything.

00:50:05.160 - 00:50:31.240

I am, I mean, he, he, of course, was still alive, and I had to come out to my parents. They were really unable to understand it. They were totally accepting of me, but just couldn't understand it, and they had no equipment to understand it. And, and of course, that interface within the church, with the outside world, I mean, so

00:50:32.520 - 00:50:58.960

many now, I mean, I'm just astounded by the number of priests and lay people who are gay, who've been able to confront the system and, and expose that honesty and the, the dualism within the church. And still, still, the church is unable to accept it. It does, it saddens me. And I've said often that one of my favourite biblical texts

00:50:58.960 - 00:51:27.880

recorded as coming from the lips of Jesus is that, let the dead bury the dead. And I think that's probably been my increasing thought about the church, because I've watched these commissions be formed. I mean, the first one was when I was, it would have been in the 1960s. And every decade, there's been a new commission, a new report,

00:51:27.880 - 00:51:58.640

which is usually taken a few years and more discussion at all sorts of levels. And, and I look on my own bookshelves at the books I've acquired since the 19, I suppose, beginning in the mid 1970s and through the 80s and 90s, particularly, I've got some 40 or 50 books written on the subject of faith and sexuality. All the information is out there, it's, it doesn't

00:51:58.640 - 00:52:25.840

need any more writing, it needs a bit of reading. And I've, I've found in my last 10 years, and I've been living in Wales, that I found my spiritual nurture, nurturing coming from the Quakers, who back in the mid 1950s, brought out their book towards a Quaker view of sex. And they've seen through it ever since. And they seem to me, as a national body, and as local groups,

00:52:26.220 - 00:52:45.400

people who put their money and their time, their energy and their pastoral care, where their mouth is, and just get on and do it. Are there any things I should have asked you about, but didn't? Or you'd like to say more about anything?

00:52:52.100 - 00:53:13.680

I, I think, I would long for, and I'm, I'm loathe to say the church, because the church is divided into so many sectors, and the Orthodox, the Romans, the Anglicans,

00:53:14.480 - 00:53:40.740

each of them within 500 different splits internally, many of them totally elitist, believing they have the whole truth. Before we move over to other faith traditions, the overwhelming thing that I have found, I cannot, I would call myself a Christian,

00:53:40.740 - 00:54:09.800

that I follow the Christian way, and I've been called to faith through the Christian church. I will never deny what I felt was a call of God through ordination, through the channels of the Church of England. I'm absolutely convinced that that is a reality in my life. But I equally can't deny the presence of the divine in people who follow,

00:54:09.800 - 00:54:40.480

honestly, the true paths within all the other world religions. And the glorious thing is the, the gospel that boils down to love and truthfulness and integrity and justice, is it the source of all those issues. Now, how we can help that get through to today's emerging generations, and it's certainly what I would try to do within my own family and would,

00:54:42.360 - 00:55:03.040

I think the book I wrote was largely for my grandchildren and their successors, they have some idea of what went on before. But if only we could get that gospel over, but it doesn't, the channel to do it through the conventional denominations and expressions, with a number of exceptions, but unfortunately, the image which is given to them,

00:55:03.040 - 00:55:34.200

and I see my own children in their 40s now with their friends and their generation, and emerging ones in my younger grandchildren getting on towards teenage, with their contemporaries, the church has nothing to say to them. They see the church for its, that they see it as a dishonest place often, and irrelevant place. And yet, within their

00:55:34.200 - 00:56:02.460

own explorations, they're desperately searching for the other and another dimension and all higher things. We fail so often. I mean, I just hope that because the struggle as a gay person of faith through, and particularly when ordained, of course, it's magnified then, the dualism within all, and the Roman Catholic Church is saying we'll accept homosexual gay

00:56:02.460 - 00:56:36.020

people, but of course the clergy can't. I can't even begin down that avenue because it's in such a mess. It's such and such a mess. I can't blame people from outside. I really can't blame people from finding it difficult. But how we approach it from, well, I do believe that the Spirit is finding ways and does find ways, but I can't, I mean, I see now the Church of England

00:56:38.300 - 00:57:05.560

probably dominantly as a, being owned by the middle to upper-middle class strata, and that's given out in everything that's done and said, with some exceptions. And I, well, let the dead bury the dead, and let's get on with it. Yes. Okay. So on that note, thank you, Geoffrey Hooper. Thank you.