Gays win the numbers game

In the raft of things I don't understand about the disgraceful treatment of Canon Jeffrey John, someone explain to me this. The meeting at Lambeth Palace in which it was decided that Canon John would affect to stand down from the Reading bishopric of his own free will (even though free will had nothing to do with it - indeed, given the axiomatic role of free will in the Christian doctrine, you would have thought this fiction alone violated the express word of the Lord far more than Jeffrey John ever did) ... anyway, that meeting, right, it took six hours.

What could they find to say for six full hours, in an argument that is so tired, so hackneyed and so lacking in logic, that has been rehearsed so many times that even I, an absolute dumkopf in the world of diocesan power-play, know how it goes?

First, the extremists, or evangelicals, or whatever else you choose to call the homophobes in the church when, for some reason, "bigots" won't do, say that homosexuality is forbidden in the Bible. Then the "liberals" (who would, in any other gathering, be called "the normal people") say that the Bible forbids or endorses a number of things that the modern world would deem acceptable or unacceptable (respectively). They often mention slavery in Leviticus.

The extremists, unwilling to say: "Well, yes, we're exactly the kind of people who would have stood against the tide on that one as well," instead fall back on: "That wasn't the same." And then they're all stumped. The liberals have to admit that, no, exploiting a human life through bondage was not exactly the same as discriminating against a human on the basis of his or her sexuality. They have to accept that they're dealing with opponents who do not understand logic or analogy. And the extremists have to accept that there are some funny old coves out there - but, not to worry, armed with enough scripture, you can hammer them into submission.

By my reckoning, even with a bit of verbal flourish, this should take no more than about six minutes. Presumably, the issue was complicated rather by the extremists' position that a gay bishop would somehow jeopardise the future of the church. It might have pleased the liberals to point out, here, that if the church were to have any future at all, it would have to be in tandem with the future of the wider society, which is manifestly overturning homophobia at every step.

So, five more minutes, max - but if the Lambeth palace heavies wasted five hours and 49 minutes, we are all wasting time discussing this issue. With due respect to the case of Jeffrey John, the questions springing out of it are the wrong questions. They all boil down to: "Will the Church of England ever accept homosexuals?" What we should be asking is: "Why should homosexuals have to accept the Church of England?"

Democracy is (bleeding obvious alert) a numbers game. I think it's worth wondering whether gay people in this country actually outnumber practising members of the Church of England. In 2001, the average Sunday attendance of church or cathedral worship was 1 million, which is 1.7% of the population. Of course, figures swell enormously on Christmas Eve, but those extra yuletide churchgoers are to the regular lot what people who get off with their same-sex friend for a bet at a Christmas party are to the gay community - not terrifically important.

A national survey of sexual attitudes and behaviour, undertaken in 1990, found that 1.4% of men had had a male partner in the last five years, while 0.6% of women had had a female one. However, when the survey was conducted again 10 years later, excluding people over 45, it found that 2.6% of men and women had had a same-sex partner in the past five years.

So, even if you were to assume that some of those partnerships had expired, to be replaced by heterosexual ones (this would count as the Christmas audience, I suppose), you're still left with the C of E commanding fewer adherents, and you are also faced with the more important truth that churchgoers are an ageing population, whereas gay people are not.

The practical application of these superior numbers is not completely straightforward - just because there are more homosexuals than there are Christians doesn't give the former the right to use this muscle, any more than football fans would be allowed to ban tennis just for the hell of it.

But imagine if a political party were to include in its manifesto a commitment to outlawing any institution that expressly banned people from office on the basis of their sexuality. It's not unthinkable - it's no less thinkable than a law against incitement to racial hatred. The gay lobby alone, without even enlisting any straight support, could probably swing that now, and will certainly be able to do so in 10 years' time.

So, there is something not only bigoted but also terribly hubristic about the way the church is handling all this. The issue is not whether it looks "out of date", or how literally you should take the Bible. The issue is that you cannot, in a democratic society, wage a sustained campaign of exclusion against a group that is bigger than you are. Not necessarily because it is immoral, but because it is just plain daft.