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So Ian, thank you for agreeing to be interviewed today as part of the project. I wondered if we might just start at the very beginning really about your childhood and where you grew up. Well I grew up in Birmingham and I think knew myself from a very early age to be different.

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So I'm not entirely sympathetic with the idea that some experience happens which in later life or in teen period which makes you aware that you're gay. I think I was aware I was gay from childhood really. I even had crushes on my elder cousins who were then doing voluntary military service training. But through all my school career and university career this

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remained dormant and repressed with the difficulties you can imagine that would raise psychologically. It wasn't until theological college I had my first sexual experience which perhaps won't surprise some people. So that was when I was about 24 so I was a very late developer. But that obviously was a bit of a release and to discover one or two other people I could

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talk to and be with. And then I was ordained, this is after having spent two years as a teacher, and went to Manchester. And again my curiosity was a time of repression. I was aware at that time of the campaign for homosexual equality which had come into being about the time of the Wolfenden Report.

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And whereabouts in your own life would that have been? I'm trying to just get a sense because my maths isn't great. The Wolfenden Report and decriminalisation, you did with the Howells? About 1960s, mid-1960s. And I was ordained in 1969 so it was all really relatively recent

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and it's hard I think for people today to realise that at that stage we didn't feel we could talk about who we were. In fact any contact could mean even criminal liability. The campaign for homosexual equality was one of the organisations that had, I think, impressed the Wolfenden Committee and continued then to press for gay rights after that report.

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And I went to one or two meetings in Manchester but even in those days you got the feeling you were in a meeting of grandees, of people who had been warriors for a long time. You didn't really feel as a younger person very much part of that but were very respectful of what they'd achieved and the effort that they'd made.

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When I'd come out rather more, which happened as a result partly of going to be a student chaplain in Bolton, Lancashire and walking one night into a pub in full regalia in my Catechum cloak and realising at once that it was a gay pub, my first inclination was to walk out but then I noticed there was someone from my previous parish in there who recognised

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me as I recognised him. And after that I felt very easy about going to the gay pubs in Bolton and thinking after all that if the Bishop got to know about this the Bishop must be on some sort of gay grapevine, which means it wouldn't matter very much. So was it an issue as you came through preparing for ordination, you said you had an experience

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while you were at theological college, but in terms of your selection, your training, was it an issue people talked about? In those days it was never mentioned, it was one of the sexuality issues that was really not discussed. I always remember a cartoon in a newspaper which had a little

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boy praying by the side of the bed and he was saying we're praying for mummy and daddy and the cat and the dog and uncle Jack who we're not supposed to talk about. It was really like that very much. So despite the public debate around Walthamden, people knew it was out there but they weren't

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really wanting to talk about it? That's right and I think people have probably always known in the church there's been a high degree of homosexuality, partly because the church over the centuries has been, and monasteries and clergy in particular, been a safe haven for people of sexual difference.

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But people preferred I think to leave it like that, as an unspoken and grey area up until this point in time, which I've been lucky enough to live through really. And after that experience in the pub and after I'd been outed by philosophy and psychology students after a meeting in my flat in Bolton, I was much more relaxed and when I moved to my first

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parish and soul charge in Manchester, the, what did I call this organisation? CHG? No, the Gay Liberation Front, sorry I lost the note from it. The Gay Liberation Front which was a sort of young person's much more activist movement that came in the wake

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of CHG, had many meetings in my rectory and I felt relaxed enough about that and I had a church and a student area which had gay couples and so things became much more relaxed for me and I became involved in a small way I suppose in gay politics in Manchester with the Manchester Christian Group which was really a forerunner of the lesbian and gay

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Christian movement in Manchester. At that point was Manchester quite a magnet for people who were exploring their sexuality, maybe felt that it was a place they'd meet other people. You hear of London and Manchester being the two sort of centres if you like.

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I think it was because there were some very impressive people, what was then called the Manchester Gay Centre which I think still exists and Paul Fairweather who is still there did a marvellous job at making that centre a home really and said for people who felt isolated and maybe were having troubles with the law or with parents or whoever could drop

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in there and a marvellous person called John Shires who many people remember who's since sadly died, did a marvellous job at the Gay Centre in Manchester and I did work a lot with them. So it was a healthy good place to be for you. You were able to integrate who you were with.

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Did the institution, did the hierarchy give you any difficulties at times? Well I suppose I was very lucky going to Manchester because one of the assistant bishops, Ted Wickham, Bishop of Middleton and Alfred Jarrett, the Dean of the Cathedral had both been founder members of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality so they were very supportive and so was my

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bishop Stanley Booth-Cliburn who was a marvellous man, very much concerned with the movement for the ordination of women. In fact he was the moderator of the movement for the ordination of women. And we used to have, it's rather amusing in a way, a meeting every year. I could never

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convince him that the movement for homosexual equality was in a sense equivalent to the movement for liberation of women and he could never feel it, though he had some intellectual appreciation of it and we agreed that I would meet him once a year and we had an evening in his office over sherry and I tried to convince him of the importance of supporting women's homosexual

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equality in the Church. And although he couldn't really come to an intellectual, he couldn't go as far as actually supporting it publicly, he gave me the permission to do gay blessings. Tell me a bit about that, that's fascinating.

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This was the 1970s, I was in my parish in Manchester, 1975-80, so it was long before really many places were doing gay blessings and here was a bishop who trusted me enough to say, I remember him saying to me, don't ask me permission because I can't give it but I trust you if you think that couples need to have a blessing then they should have

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it. There was no prayers with, it was quite clear that this was a blessing. Yes, and I had to make this clear to people, this had no legal weight, a blessing is a blessing but it was in that sense private in the sense that it didn't have any public

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support, as it were, public weight. We often used to do these blessings in people's houses but sometimes, of course I was trans when they asked for it in church, but luckily my church in Manchester, St John Chrysostom which is still a great supporter of gay issues and its present vicary in Domosol, the congregation

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was easy enough for me to be able to do occasional gay blessings in the church itself. And what I used in conversation with David Melling who was then the Dean of Humanities at Manchester Polytechnic and a Greek Orthodox by adoption and had a tremendous breadth of philosophical outlook and was a great influence on me.

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We looked at the Orthodox have a tradition of blessings of friendships and we were able to adapt these for, which I still use, although many other orders of gay blessings have come out since, not least from Jim Cotter of course, yes the great Jim Cotter we miss so much. But I still use these because there are some beautiful prayers in the Orthodox tradition

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and in fact it's been clear I think from the work of John Bosworth the American historian who sadly also since died, that there's a great history of gay blessings within the church and particularly in the Orthodox tradition and the poet Byron witnessed a gay blessing in an Albanian church in the 19th century.

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And so I was happy to, I continued this, I was never asked to do a gay blessing in Africa where I worked later, but I was in the United States where I worked later still and so I feel very privileged to throughout my life have been able to help people in this way and show that the church, at least unofficially, could give them some sort of support.

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And were these, I mean I guess it's hard to generalise, but were these people who were part of the church community and saw this as part of the expression of their love for one another in a church context or were they quite often people on the fringes of church who felt that they were nevertheless seeking something in the way of affirmation of their

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relationship or a bit of both? Always people on the fringe of the church who I'd met maybe through, even in a club or through one of the gay organisations like the Gay Centre in Manchester or I'd been, they'd been referred to me by people like that or they'd come to know that I was sympathetic.

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I think there are often people who thought they could never find the church could be sympathetic or do anything for them and saw this as a window. I think often people, I mean who are religious but not church goers, find that these key moments in their lives, a blessing or some sort of recognition of their partnership in

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a spiritual capacity is something that's very helpful to them and so it was important to help them. And many of them kept in touch for some time afterwards though none of them that I can think of became regular church members.

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Well that's not true, none of my church but some of them did go regularly to their own local churches. But somehow there was a kind of underground railway by which they would find their way to you. That's a good way of putting it. Were there other people around Manchester who were sympathetic to what you were doing?

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Were there other churches that were supportive? It seems a long time ago now. I don't think many other churches, certainly clergy and we had a fair amount of gay clergy in Manchester as of course is true of most large diocese.

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But all of us are usually known to each other but often not able to, feeling we could act publicly or come out. And the thing that I suppose annoyed me much, there were also clergy who were gay but, and this happens in various walks of life, but were rather against any form of liberation.

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I think partly because it threatened their own security of being anonymous. But also they preferred things, as I argue many bishops have done, to remain a sort of rather curtained off area. It was just there but it was simpler not to face up to it.

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Why do you think that is? Do you think people just become so conditioned to living like that that the change to something new is something they can't envision? I'd say it was the security.

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It was the fact that they felt secure being hidden as it were. Whereas people couldn't face what might be required of them if they actually came out. And what do you think that they imagine? It's difficult to imagine what other people imagine isn't it?

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What do you think they thought might be imagined of them or expected of them? Because as clergy it might put you in positions of difficulty as we've seen recently in the press it still can. In positions of your job, your employment.

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Also the fear I think of reaction from your parishioners and people who were quite close to you and a feeling of rejection. And I think we all felt that to some extent. It was a question of whether you had the courage to say well this is a situation which really

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can't go on. So what were the choices that you made around all of that? How did you handle that? I suppose I was lucky being in Manchester and that after the very modest outing I had

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by students in Bolton it was easy to be myself without feeling the necessity to cover up too much. But I suppose the big decision I made was when for various reasons I moved to Africa after 20 years in Manchester I decided I would tell the missionary society that I was gay

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and that I wasn't going to be in any degree secretive about this anymore. So give me a bit of a timeline on that. When would that have been? I was in Manchester for about 18 years.

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So we're talking about I went to Africa, well the process started in 1987. Okay. And I started in Africa in 1980, well at the end of 1987. And to do credit to the missionary society, USPG, they accepted me but they took a long

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time to decide compared with other candidates who were up for interview at the same time and they suggested that I saw their psychiatrist. How did that go? Well it was extremely funny because the psychiatrist looked a bit like Jean Marple in the Agatha

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Christie novels, an elderly retired missionary from India who couldn't bring herself to actually ask any direct questions. It was going to be an awkward assessment then. And talked to me about the problem just of working alone in a foreign area and suggesting

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I might need a hobby to occupy myself. Did she have any thoughts about a suitable hobby for a single gentleman? Oh she did, she suggested bird watching which could be done at any time of the day and night as she put it.

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And so before I went I requested from USPG a pair of binoculars which I'm afraid were not granted. Did you explain to them why you thought you might need binoculars? Well I said that the psychiatrist thought the bird watcher might be a good idea but

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they obviously didn't go that far. I wonder who else they ever sent to her? I don't know. I don't like to think.

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So you found yourself in Africa, what was that like? Well from the point of view of a fairly recent, as it were, reconciled gay man in terms of coming out and so on. It was marvellous because I was in a little country called Lesotho as a principal of the

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theological college there. And in Lesotho I found that really people, well Africans generally, at least in the south, are very relaxed physically and so to be with the people who regularly held hands with you while talking or while you were walking and were very physically affectionate was, I mean

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it was a tremendous, relaxing experience really. But I also found I had one or two serious relationships in Lesotho and I found that, and this was really a very important discovery, to discover that people in different cultures perceive sexuality differently.

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I had what we would call, at two different times in Lesotho, a gay relationship. But the people concerned would not have considered themselves gay and if I had used that sort of language they would have been rather horrified. Now I discovered that Lesotho really regard what we would call homosexuality as a sort

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of deep expression of friendship, as they saw it in friendship terms rather than sexual terms. So that even if a person had a sexual expression of a friendship it wouldn't be thought of as sexual primarily or conceptualised as such, but as friendship.

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So this enabled for instance, though this wasn't true in my own experience, but for married men to have sexual relationships with other men, but consider it friendship and not in any sense offending their macro image of themselves or being a threat to their marriage, as they saw it.

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A very different concept of marriage as well then, on those terms. Well I'm afraid yes, because there's a downside to this as well, not only, well one suspects that pursuitive women realise that their husbands sometimes behaved like this, but also it was quite common for husbands to wander after the first child came along

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and this was more than once justified beyond the fact they eventually years later would come back to their wife as though this justified it. Okay. So there was a much, I suppose, freer attitude to institutionalised relationships altogether perhaps.

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It's all responsibility even. Well that's a sharper way of putting it, yes that's true. Sorry to be sharp. That's right.

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Just thinking of a woman's perspective there. But it did strike me, in relation to how debates are conducted in the West, that if we thought that other cultures define sexuality differently, and as I was later to discover when I worked in North America, that there are Native American groups who think in terms of more than two

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sexualities, for instance. Navajo would think in terms of six sexualities. This puts the whole debate in a quite different context and also through meeting John Boswell, the American historian I mentioned earlier, and reading his books to understand, which

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only really came to terms at this time, to understand the history of the Church in this matter was quite different from what one assumed. One always assumed the Church says marriage or nothing, or celibacy, as though celibacy for homosexuals must be something imposed rather than a chosen vocation.

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Here one discovered through reading Boswell that, in fact, for the first millennium of the Church's existence, there had been no serious problems about sexual difference. Indeed, in the 13th century, the height of the idea of Christendom, the Church had remarkably relaxed about relationships between monks and monks, nuns and nuns, bishops and bishops.

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Indeed, there seemed to have been communities in the Orthodox Church of the East of remembering homosexual couples in their prayers, in their prayers for the dead. It wasn't until the height of the Middle Ages, when the Middle Ages started to decline with the rise of nationalism and so on, and the Church looked to a scapegoat to explain why

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its position seemed to be weakening, that you get real antagonism against women in particular, but also witches, usurers, homosexuals, gypsies, who become the scapegoat sort of groups. And this was reinforced very much by the Reformation. But to think that the first millennium of the Church, the Church was much more in the

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position it's coming into now than what we're used to. It's always disappointed me that Rowan Williams, who I respect enormously, didn't bring in these sorts of wider arguments, which would have made the discussion of sexuality in the Church more complicated, but also more honest, in the sense that we would have had

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to look at things as a fuller picture of how sexuality is perceived in the world, as distinct from merely Western European traditions. I wonder if we're in an age where we value simplicity, not complexity. Life is complicated, so if there are sections of our human experience that people can simplify

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for us, we'll go for them. It could be. I find it very interesting now that in the cities, and I think the term coined has been metrosexual, there have been some interesting studies recently of how young people now seem

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to find it quite acceptable, and I suppose we're talking probably about young educated people, of all groups, find it quite easy to think of having a sexual relationship with their own sex, or the opposite sex. They become increasingly common.

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It suggests there is a greater sexual fluidity than some of us would have thought there was once. But also, it chimes with my experience in other cultures, that that indeed does exist. But it makes it more difficult for young people today, I think, to realise the difficulties

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some of us have had in Western societies in times past, and very recent past. Very recent, yeah. Where we needed gay clubs and things, when we discovered they existed, to go to just to be with gay people at all.

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It all had to be very secretive and furtive, particularly if we were in sensitive occupations. I'm quite interested in you talking about what Manchester and Bolton were like. I'm interested in you saying that Bolton has multiple gay clubs. That is interesting.

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But I was also wondering how it felt being in Africa. Did that feel like a relatively safe space? Although I'm also aware of the political climate more generally, when you were in Lesotho. How did that feel as a gay person, as a gay man?

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Lesotho felt very safe. But I'm speaking because I was there in the early, late 80s, early 90s. And society there has suffered a lot since, because of its economic impoverishment. And I'm not sure it would be such an easy place today.

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It was really my Eden period, really, the period I feel in exile from. This staggeringly beautiful country, staggeringly beautiful people, with this very relaxed attitude. I think it's not just in my imagination it was like that, but I think it's less like it now. But when I moved after that to Zimbabwe, I only survived a year before being deported.

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And certainly the Shona attitude was very different. Part of its sexuality was something you couldn't really talk about at all. And certainly no one would have ever admitted to being gay. And the official opinion was in the church that homosexuality didn't exist in Zimbabwe, but was a Western import.

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And that's very much the attitude of President Mugabe, for instance. And we're not sure why I was deported from Zimbabwe, because I was never given a reason, incredibly enough. It could well have been because one of my jobs was the training of youth leaders. And youth being youth, they were quite radical.

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And the church in Mashangaland, northern Zimbabwe, was quite conservative. And I don't think I thought this through carefully enough, but clearly there was going to be a clash between my organising radical youth workers with the establishment. But also it could have been because I was not...

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Although I didn't proclaim my sexuality from the rooftops, nor did I conceal it, it could well have been that my sexuality was discovered and I was in a relationship in Zimbabwe. I was quite sure that wasn't known, because it was a relationship with a man in a remote rural area. But because of either something I'd said or something else I'd said, I think that...

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And of course most people would massively assume that was the reason for my dismissal. I'm not sure still, but it was very likely it was. So that was a very different sort of African society. But of course, I mean, I got to know people in Zimbabwe who were,

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certainly as we would define it in our culture, gay, young men who needed to talk these things through. I didn't come across any women, I have to say, neither Lesotho or Zimbabwe, who admitted to being what we would call gay, but they certainly existed. Was it possible for people in those countries to be in contact with one another at that point,

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or was even that sort of assembly and organising dangerous? In some ways it was easier having a foreigner coming in who could afford to be a bit more open for people to talk to and then maybe discover themselves, because they had both spoken to me at different times.

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Okay, okay. Otherwise in Lesotho it was easier because things were more relaxed, and people in villages certainly knew of other people, yes. In Zimbabwe it would have been much more difficult for people to have been brave enough.

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And of course, as you know, since I'm President Mugabe, I mean, if you are openly gay in Zimbabwe you take very real risks of being physically attacked and even imprisoned. And would you say that that's got much worse since you were there? Much worse, yes.

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So after you were deported from Zimbabwe, what happened next? Well, I had a marvellous Archbishop. The Archbishop of Central Africa was the Bishop of Botswana, who gave me every backing, and because I had not been accused of anything,

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fully supported me in law and so on, and took me on in Botswana as a similar lay training job. I was there for two years. Botswana is much more relaxed. It's the only, well not the only, but it's probably the most successful parliamentary democracy on a British model in Africa, and a very peaceful country.

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And I certainly met people who had an ambivalent, if not exclusively, homosexuality while I was there. We got to know each other, but homosexuality is illegal in Botswana, even though it's very rare for any cases to be brought, and there are people fighting for its legalisation, of course.

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But they can do that in Botswana without having to be afraid of being imprisoned or beaten up or whatever. So a much safer, more developed democracy there. In Botswana, I moved into South Africa before I became ill and had to come out of Africa. And of course in South Africa, by then, this was the late 90s,

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South Africa is the only country in the world to have gay rights enshrined in the Constitution. It has caused some problems, particularly under the present more traditionally Africanised nature of the presidency in South Africa at the moment. There's been some desire to remove this, but I don't think that will ever happen. Because it did reflect the fact that lots of the leaders of the ANC had been educated in Western universities and so on,

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and had been able to make the connection between different sorts of empowerment and freedom that needed to be exercised. One of my happiest memories of before I left Africa altogether was going on a boat out to see Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela had been imprisoned, and coming back in with two young men holding each other in the prow of the boat as we went into Cape Town,

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and seeing the national flag flying over the government buildings in Cape Town. It seemed a very marvellous picture of the new South Africa. Yes, it is. It's a lovely picture. And so much change in a relatively short period of time since then.

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Yes, everywhere. I suppose that's one of the marvellous things. In my lifetime, things have changed so extraordinarily quickly. Being in Ireland, because I came back from Africa, was off work with ME for two years. The hope was I would then go to North America, because the Canadian church had helped me very much in my work in Africa,

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where I worked furtively for the ANC in moving refugees. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? You say that so casually, but as someone who can remember that period, at least from a very long distance, that doesn't sound undramatic to me.

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Well, once I'd been appointed, it was pointed out to me by my contact, that I really needed to belong to the ANC, otherwise, because the struggle against apartheid was still going on and Lesotho being an independent country, surrounded by South Africa,

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was of course a very useful base for the ANC. And if I didn't join, I'd be in the way. So, I was interviewed by the ANC in England, before I went out there. And they were very nervous, because their office in London had been infiltrated by the South African secret police.

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And I was met in a car and blindfolded and taken to a secret location, which was all a bit scary at the time. But my task was really to help move refugees, so if they came into the country through the very porous borders of Lesotho,

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they needed to be moved out, because at that point, Lesotho had a military dictatorship imposed by South Africa. So although it was safer than being in South Africa, it wasn't ultimately safe. And so, my job would be to deal with embassies who could help with passports and money and so on,

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and get people out of the country, either by flights, where there's some risk they might be intercepted, or getting them back across borders, which often meant taking my truck at night to some river crossing or mountain pass, where they could fairly safely evade the South African authorities. And there was some little risk to me.

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My passport was always marked every time I crossed the border back into South Africa, and I was held up, I mean held up to be detained, going through border posts. But obviously I wasn't having any of the risk the people I was helping were having. Did you realise when you went out there that that was what this might entail?

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Not when I originally was offered the job of the board of the seminary, but... Because why did the seminary sound so sedated? Well, that's why I thought it was a very good cover, you see. I always thought they were very wise to that.

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Now, of course I'd envisaged going out and being supportive and sympathetic, empathetic, but not that that should be... But I could understand the point that, you know, there was no point in going out if I was going to be in the way of liberation.

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And so to work with them in a more formal way was, I could see, important. Do you think your employers knew, in appointing you, that that would be likely to be... Nobody was able to know. Obviously people guessed, I'm sure.

00:33:26.520 - 00:33:41.140

I mean, Desmond Tute always used to tell, and he was my archbishop of course, and I used to see a lot, and luckily he's still in touch with, and a great supporter, of course, of gay liberation. He used to tell us all we're not to belong to any political party,

00:33:41.220 - 00:34:01.720

knowing full well that nearly all the black African clergy in South Africa belong to, or supportive of, the ANC or PAC. And it was, in my very modest way, it was a great thing to be part of this great liberation. And to be there when it came to fruition, because of course,

00:34:02.100 - 00:34:15.820

when I went out there we thought there was still many years of struggle ahead. But well, as soon as Nelson Mandela was released really, before anything else happened, the whole structure began to crumble. Were you out there for the first elections?

00:34:16.480 - 00:34:22.120

Or were you back here then? No, I was back here then, but I was there when Mandela was actually released. And what was that like as a day? Well, I was electric.

00:34:22.960 - 00:34:38.860

The great thing was, I suppose one of the proudest moments of my life, when he was released, political gatherings were still forbidden in Lesotho. This was the military government reacting to South African pressure. And the Trade Union Congress in Lesotho organised,

00:34:38.860 - 00:34:53.960

they decided to organise a demonstration to celebrate Mandela's release, to test the government's resolve in Lesotho. And the seminary, we were asked to lead the procession. I cynically thought this was perhaps because,

00:34:54.380 - 00:35:11.440

if they saw clergymen and ordinands in cassocks, that the police or the army would be less likely to open fire or be very violent. But anyway, we had this enormous honour of leading the procession through the streets, which began very timidly, and then people watching from a distance,

00:35:11.640 - 00:35:28.480

and then gradually people would join in, people were crying. And there was a huge crowd, thousands of people in the end, gathered to hear Chris Harney speak in the stadium in Maseru. He of course became a minister and the South African government was shot

00:35:29.220 - 00:35:47.340

by an apartheid supporter soon afterwards. But that was a very special moment, yes, to be chosen to be part of that demonstration of freedom in Lesotho. And of course the government didn't intervene at all.

00:35:50.860 - 00:36:04.740

And it was good to see, for myself, the connection between liberation movements of different sorts, and to be part of it. But from the point of the gay rights issue,

00:36:04.820 - 00:36:16.500

the most extraordinary moment has been in Ireland, where, after I'd been ill, I worked in Ireland for a time before I went to North America as the Dean of the Cathedral of Turin,

00:36:16.560 - 00:36:32.780

which is near Galway on the west coast, and was the ancient capital of Ireland, with a glorious Romanesque quiet part of the present cathedral. And I'd written a briefing paper for the notorious

00:36:33.800 - 00:36:44.160

1998 Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops, in which George Carey made the great mistake, then Archbishop, of demanding a vote. I think if that vote hadn't been demanded,

00:36:44.280 - 00:36:56.160

we wouldn't be in some of the problems we've been in since. And I'd written a briefing paper, merely arguing that it was possible to be Christian and gay, not dealing with any of the issues like gay marriage or gay ordination,

00:36:56.980 - 00:37:06.840

knowing there's going to be this vast spectrum of opinion among Anglican bishops worldwide. And who was that briefing paper aimed at? Was that coming out of your contacts in Africa and contacts like that?

00:37:06.860 - 00:37:14.440

Not really, though. It enabled me to mention Desmond Tutu's support race, specifically, of course, and so helped me write a paper

00:37:14.440 - 00:37:33.240

that attempted to bestride divides of opinion and culture. But a reporter for the Irish Sunday Times noticed this, and it became second-page headlines in the Irish Sunday Times. Dean of Tuam says you can be Christian and gay,

00:37:33.340 - 00:37:43.200

as though this was a revelation. But it was, in a sense, for the Church of Ireland, which reacted very badly to it. I mean, I lost a considerable portion of the cathedral congregation,

00:37:44.120 - 00:37:54.200

one of my church wards, another church, petitioned the bishop for my removal, and had really no support. The Archbishop of Armagh, Robin Eames,

00:37:54.200 - 00:38:06.540

who ironically became chairman of the Windsor Report, the Church's moderate response to this issue, was really hostile. And the new bishop of Tuam,

00:38:06.560 - 00:38:14.200

who had arrived just before this, was the youngest bishop in the Church of Ireland. We called him the boy bishop, because he looked well under the 39 years he actually was.

00:38:14.880 - 00:38:26.320

Didn't really know how to react. And so I felt I had to resign, as there was no support. Although there was immense support from the Catholic Church and society generally, in the press.

00:38:26.740 - 00:38:36.140

Got very good press coverage. Letters from all over Ireland about people who had no idea the Church could possibly support them. Parents of gay people, gay people themselves.

00:38:38.320 - 00:38:49.360

And support from the President of Ireland and the members of the Senate and Dáil, that I should stay and fight this. But I felt, you know, as I was employed by the Church to do a job,

00:38:49.400 - 00:38:58.360

which clearly the Church was not happy with me doing, I had no choice. But the great thing has been that since then, I mean, there's been this sea change in Ireland and attitudes.

00:38:59.360 - 00:39:15.140

And including within the Church of Ireland, where now there is a dean of a cathedral in a civil union with his partner. And where bishops are now supporting gay ordination and so on.

00:39:15.740 - 00:39:28.500

And where, of course, civil society has adopted gay marriage. So it's been tremendously exciting and encouraging to see how societies can change. And how actually, underneath,

00:39:29.400 - 00:39:40.660

most people are very sympathetic to people being themselves and loving one another. And can see rather more easily, it seems, and through institutions, particularly religious institutions, sadly,

00:39:41.800 - 00:39:54.460

the reality we're dealing with, which is human beings in love. And receiving the love of God through their relationship. You've seen a massive amount of change then. A huge amount of change.

00:39:54.480 - 00:40:08.100

That's extraordinary looking back, yes. I mean, I'm now 74, and ordained 40-odd years ago. Yes, it's not a long time in the span of human history,

00:40:08.180 - 00:40:15.500

but what's happened has been extraordinary. And that the change hasn't always come when people might have expected. That's right. And, of course, the thing we must remember here

00:40:15.500 - 00:40:24.780

is that the change hasn't come at all for very many countries in the world, not least in Africa and Asia. And where it's still possible in countries like Russia,

00:40:24.900 - 00:40:39.900

which aims to have equality and for it to be very dangerous to be gay. The amount of travel and the context in which you've worked, how have they shaped your understanding of both the complexity

00:40:39.900 - 00:40:50.160

but also the signs of hope where perhaps you wouldn't have thought you'd find them? Particularly in Africa, I'm thinking. A lot of people, I guess, haven't had that experience.

00:40:52.900 - 00:41:04.860

I think what has been proved true to me is something I read in a novel that now nobody remembers by a Romanian author called Dimitri.

00:41:05.040 - 00:41:16.960

It was called Incognito, which came out in the 60s. In the height of the Cold War. And it spoke of Christians in countries like Romania.

00:41:18.440 - 00:41:31.340

Often it was dangerous to be a Christian in those times, certainly to try and attend church. And he saw isolated Christians, little Christian cells, like little lights shining in the darkness,

00:41:31.500 - 00:41:43.520

like stars in the sky, and they're being signs of hope. I suppose my experiences as things began to develop in Manchester and then finding people who had the courage to be themselves in Africa

00:41:43.520 - 00:41:53.780

and even in places like Zimbabwe, it gives you the confidence to think that these sort of... that this image is a very real one, that the lights will gradually...

00:41:56.900 - 00:42:05.620

If you thought of the lights as being little fires, I suppose, they'll catch light from each other and the conflagration will grow and liberty will come.

00:42:05.780 - 00:42:15.360

So although you experience lots of reverses and people's lives being shattered in the end, you feel... I mean, I do feel, yes, a genuine hope

00:42:15.360 - 00:42:25.880

that things will get better in the end. And that people of faith, not least in Africa, have played a large part in this. And although the church,

00:42:26.680 - 00:42:36.680

sitting in the church room in recent times, has been a disaster in this area, really, it's worth remembering that those people in Manchester, who I mentioned earlier,

00:42:36.740 - 00:42:46.420

who were founder members of CHE, in many ways, church members individually, often rank-and-file church members who nobody will remember in the annals of history,

00:42:46.560 - 00:42:56.080

have been key catalysts for change and have been brave enough to carry on. That's what I found very moving about what you talked about in terms of your time in Lesotho,

00:42:56.080 - 00:43:07.860

was that people of faith were seen as being absolutely critical to the struggle and that, I don't know, I don't want to put words into your mouth, but that the gospel imperative is around justice.

00:43:08.220 - 00:43:15.000

That's right, yes, exactly. And that all of those things are connected. I was interested in what you were saying earlier about Booth Kibben,

00:43:15.240 - 00:43:22.680

just not quite getting it, that sexuality was the same as women. Yes, yes. We're in for one, we're in for all of those things.

00:43:22.840 - 00:43:29.720

Yes, that's right, yes. But that's a massive amount to take on as well and actually maybe we're each called to do the thing that we can do in the context where we are.

00:43:30.420 - 00:43:39.940

And that's the thing you talked about, the lights joining together. You've talked, you've written about your life. You've written a book fairly recently.

00:43:40.260 - 00:43:51.280

Tell me about how that was and why that was and tell me how that's been received. Well, the book is called... What's it called?

00:43:51.280 - 00:44:00.540

Oh, A Disreputable Priest, that's right. A Disreputable Priest. Because that's... It comes from saying a student said to me in Manchester,

00:44:00.740 - 00:44:07.960

he said, you're a disreputable priest, but went on to say, only a disreputable priest can help me, which was interesting.

00:44:08.560 - 00:44:15.020

And when I was struggling for a title for the book, some writers I know in America, I mentioned that story, said to me, well, there's your title.

00:44:16.040 - 00:44:28.540

And yes, it sort of gives an account of some of the things we've talked about today and some of the ideas that have influenced me and I've developed from those experiences.

00:44:28.920 - 00:44:38.260

So the things I've written about, particularly the church and gay issues in the book. I've contributed to chapters in other books that have been written elsewhere,

00:44:39.660 - 00:44:49.700

including a marvellous book I want to mention from South Africa, edited by Stephen de Grouchy, who was a great friend of mine who tragically died in a bathing accident,

00:44:50.760 - 00:44:59.960

called Aliens in the Household of God, which is one of the best books, I think, about the church and homosexuality that I know. I've only got one chapter in it, by the way.

00:45:00.040 - 00:45:13.980

I'm not tracing my own work. But I've started writing the book because people who haven't had your experiences think they've been rather exotic

00:45:13.980 - 00:45:22.980

and I should write about them. But obviously, I've done nothing more than many, many people have done and done much better. But I thought, well, maybe for my family,

00:45:23.140 - 00:45:32.080

maybe for a friend who don't know of all my life because it's been lived in different places, might like an account. But then it became more personal.

00:45:32.220 - 00:45:42.180

I could see the point of trying to write and bring the various threads in your life together and try and make some sense of your life. I'm the sort of person who's always believed

00:45:42.180 - 00:45:50.200

that if a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing badly. You have a go at it. But I've always been in the situation

00:45:50.200 - 00:46:00.020

of taking too much on and, in fact, never doing things really well. So I'm very conscious of having done a lot badly. And I probably wanted partly to reassure myself

00:46:00.020 - 00:46:07.520

that in all the things I've done badly, there was a bit of good. Some things were worthwhile. And the book helped me do that, I think.

00:46:07.900 - 00:46:13.340

It's gone through various forms, helped by people. It was largely written in America before I left.

00:46:15.240 - 00:46:22.740

And then I found this marvellous publisher, Gilead Books, where Chris Hayes, I don't know how he makes a living,

00:46:22.880 - 00:46:33.780

believes that he should publish books for which there's very little commercial value but which he thinks people ought to read. And it's had a critical

00:46:35.000 - 00:46:44.440

but fair review in the Church Times. It's had various reviews elsewhere but we've not been able to get it in the national media in any big way.

00:46:45.240 - 00:46:52.400

But it's sold about 500 copies, which I'm told is so far, which I'm told is quite good in the first six months for a book by an unknown author.

00:46:53.080 - 00:47:03.760

And the main thing is it's been very well received, including I live in this retirement community here and I wondered how it would go down here. Well, I mean, it was bought

00:47:04.600 - 00:47:13.460

with the same alacrity as some of the ladies organised on a outing to see Fifty Shades of Grey. I don't know whether they were expecting my book

00:47:13.460 - 00:47:19.320

to be the same sort of thing. But the amazing thing is, and the encouraging thing is, to hear people, elderly people,

00:47:19.420 - 00:47:28.100

that much experience of things like this, I'd just accept it without batting an eyelid. I expected maybe some people would stop talking to me or I'd have to do a conversation.

00:47:28.180 - 00:47:36.580

Not at all. People discuss things with me from time to time and there's people I've known in other institutions and organisations

00:47:36.580 - 00:47:44.540

who've been unfailingly supportive. I expected some hostile comeback, but so far it hasn't happened. It's been fine.

00:47:45.040 - 00:47:49.380

It's interesting, isn't it? It's full circle from when you talked about when you were growing up. We all knew it was there,

00:47:49.400 - 00:47:57.340

but nobody talked about this stuff. But that on some level, maybe people have internalised changes or perhaps just worked out what's worth

00:47:58.460 - 00:48:05.420

kicking up a fuss over. And sexuality for many, many people just isn't anymore. Because these are all people of your generation

00:48:05.420 - 00:48:10.680

and considerably older, and they don't bat an eyelid. They think it's just fine. As much as I think,

00:48:10.740 - 00:48:20.600

as with Africans who have to make decisions in this area against a background, a much more difficult social background than ours, I think if you trust people,

00:48:21.680 - 00:48:31.120

they actually see the light and the love comes through even when all the institutions and other things might be telling them otherwise.

00:48:32.100 - 00:48:40.120

So I find that trusting people has always been immensely important when you enter new situations. Don't go with too many of your own preconceptions,

00:48:40.920 - 00:48:49.640

but trust that you'll be supported. Things will be there. You talked about your book was a way of drawing your life together

00:48:49.640 - 00:48:59.200

and identifying some threads. Can you tell me what the threads were? You had to pick some threads or themes? The big thing for me at the moment

00:48:59.200 - 00:49:06.940

would be my own sexual journey from vague awareness. Of course, having to become aware of yourself without being able to discuss it with anybody

00:49:06.940 - 00:49:19.220

I think is very difficult. Because I've always tended to put work in inverted commas first, I've never contracted

00:49:21.000 - 00:49:29.300

any really lasting relationship myself until my seventies. When, believe it or not, on my seventieth birthday

00:49:29.300 - 00:49:36.760

I met a marvellous French person who I was with for two years until he relocated and there were too many difficulties to overcome.

00:49:37.600 - 00:49:50.980

And now I've met another friend who's become a partner and it's marvellous to realise I remember Olivier, my French friend, saying

00:49:50.980 - 00:49:57.920

whatever happens to us if I've taught you one thing there's life after seventy. So I say to all older listeners to this day

00:49:57.920 - 00:50:08.280

it's never too late. To watch that journey has been interesting. To see the journey of society at large at least in the West

00:50:08.280 - 00:50:17.660

to this greater sense of freedom and openness I think one's been a very little part of that process. It's above all the people I think

00:50:17.660 - 00:50:25.900

whose stories I've shared who we haven't talked about. People like Paul Fairweather and John Shires who I mentioned at the Manchester Gay Centre

00:50:25.900 - 00:50:33.840

and others who've had far more heroic lives and suffered far more than I have and have achieved much more

00:50:33.840 - 00:50:42.400

but who are really the most lovely and they did because they're the most lovely loving and fully integrated and fully formed people.

00:50:43.140 - 00:50:54.380

And to think that I've met so many people like that Desmond Tutu obviously being the most famous but I mean lots of other people who've become such an important part of my life

00:50:54.380 - 00:51:02.840

and when you look back it's just really despite any difficulties I've had it's been a privilege to have lived I think in this time and knowing the people I've had

00:51:02.840 - 00:51:14.920

who've so enriched me and I just feel that I've been a a tiny presence among giants really in the struggles I've been involved in.

00:51:16.540 - 00:51:22.640

That's a really nice place to stop if that's okay with you. Indeed, thank you. Thank you very much indeed Ian, thank you.

00:51:24.380 - 00:51:25.460

Thank you.