What I note about my attitude to homosexual tendency or orientation or behaviour, as I considered these things in my younger years, comes from the fact that I rejected all these things in myself. Several of my friends, some of whom became prominent and famous musicians, were gay. I was both condemning and jealous. I could not (and rightly so) reconcile my friendship with my condemnation. This was in its own way a message from the Most High, but I could not hear it at the time. I know of others who suffer this contradiction between their inner framework and their desire to be 'right'. I think this produces a potential for severe conflict in social behaviour.

A second aspect of my history is that I was abused as a child by a priest who must have been a frustrated homosexual. He allowed his desire to express itself on those who could not defend themselves. But he exercised this perverse behaviour in the name of punishment, often for offences that had no need for corporal punishment. I now have great sympathy for him. It is unfortunate that he did not know the power of his own message of the cross, for there is no doubt it could both have saved him and have prevented some of  the social damage he perpetrated on several youths at my school.

But we do not live by social benefit or damage - all things work together for good, even the perverse laws that arise from our fear (do not touch, do not taste, do not handle) rather than from our transformation. It is clear that I cannot separate the social from the reality of my faith. For God is at work in the world's social fabric whatever our faith is.

Now to the specific sub-questions:

1. is homosexuality a negative or a neutral influence on society? I would say positive. The homosexual is often the one who exercises a gentleness that general social behaviour can ignore.

2. is it caused by nature or nurture? I cannot answer this. I do not know, nor do I think the answer can be known. The influences are too complex to assess.

3. is it curable and so on? Clearly it is only curable if it is a disease. See below for my real answer here. I do not think it is a disease in the medical or social sense. Neither do I consider it sin. Sin is not a specific action, but the violation of a relationship.

• What is your attitude to the authority of the Bible and how do you see homosexuality in the light of biblical teaching? 

I regard the Bible as authoritative. By this, I mean that it has authors that have reported their experience and that they have not lied to us or to themselves except where 'their lies' are the product of their own cultural conditioning. Because of this, we must read it with anti-glare filters, trying as best we can to filter both our own conditioning and theirs. This requires some considerable historical and theological sense. Fortunately, it is feasible through that mysterious act of faith to which the Bible itself gives testimony. O my hermeneutical circles! How can we read anything as authoritative under these conditions?

To be brief, for I have written extensively about this elsewhere (see links below), the Bible teaches me the death of Jesus for our sakes. I had a need to consider myself dead - and I said to God: I cannot think or know this thought or act on it for I have died as you promised. And God, having tested me adequately (an understatement if there ever was one), said to me: I love you and I am yours and you are mine - all of you; all of me; do not be afraid. God then showed me the joy of his temple. I live by this joy in due respect and responsibility towards my neighbour. This is not living by law but by grace through faith. I will not be willing to die for 'it', but I would be willing to die for my enemies as Jesus did. It would be a misunderstanding to say he died for a belief - we should rather die, if we must die, for the enemy that has not yet known the love of God. But no one need die since one has died for all, so all have died. And they - pro or con - need to die to their cultural prejudices so that they can live to God - if indeed this is their belief.

• Describe your opponents’ position as fairly and sympathetically as you can.

Who is my opponent? Well, I have met a few in dialogue. Mostly, we have been able to ignore each other. What I have written, I have written to undermine fear - both theirs and mine. I have some problems with both my own liberality and my own conservatism. Sometimes I think that I accept what I formerly condemned only for my own convenience. Then I remember how I learned in the Spirit though my own faithful action to conform myself to the death of Christ. My opponent is both liberal and conservative: liberal for the danger of condoning anything in terms of tolerance - sin is still real and the heart deceptive; and conservative for the tendency to legalism based on fear. (For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Galatians 5 is quite relevant to the current disputes.)

Because of these tensions, I search for an imagery that encompasses both the bride-bridegroom of Genesis, the Song, and Revelation and the deep relationship between David and Jonathan, as well as the Centurion and his servant, or Jesus and the beloved disciple. These seem to me to best reflect the mercy, the tender loving kindness, of God which permeates the Bible both TNK and NT and which is present in the Koran in the name All-Merciful. Still, all the religious of Abraham can have a fear rather than faith if they do not hear and walk - obey - as commanded. ('Command' is a positive word as distinct from 'order'.) Mercy is not the benevolence of a distant courtroom judge but the active presence of love. (Masculine, I am his bride, feminine, his Nazirite, my hair shaved and accepted under his feet. )

• What degree of difference of conscience can one allow for in the church and what hope is there for holding Anglicanism together?

God holds together, not us. Conscience is critical. We must listen to our conscience and distinguish conscience from competition, worldly success, and our cultural prejudices and fears. Conscience was what I did not listen to when I condemned my gay friends. Our fears are not the voice of conscience but of self-protection. We must not even touch it, says Eve. Conscience is what my abuser only listened to by making himself obvious through beating some of the non-residents who lived with their parents - so his actions were found out after 3 years and he was dismissed. He too could have done better. Akinola needs to hear his righteousness from God's point of view, not his own. (Contrast the generous opinion of Ndungane.) The bishops are revealing that process, canon law, and scholarship, wonderful though they can be, are not adequate to define grace. (We do not need a stricter legalism to compete with Islam. True religion is not a team sport.) 

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