On the day I celebrated the first anniversary of my wedding, Pope Francis announced his “conditional approval” for Catholic priests to bless same-sex couples – under certain circumstances – although he was keen to add that these blessings should not be seen as validation of same-sex relationships. “It will be possible to bless same-sex couples but without any type of ritualisation or offering the impression of a marriage,” the Church announced in a report published on Vatican News, adding that “the blessing does not signify approval of the union”. In the eyes of the Catholic church, it seems, queer love is still a sin.
Well, you can stick your blessing, Pope Francis. It’s a fig leaf, a PR exercise, a means of laundering your prejudice to make it seem like a step towards acceptance.
I was brought up Catholic, went to Catholic schools and mass every Sunday, and served as an altar boy for years. From an early age I also knew I was gay. But some of my teachers made me believe that being gay was wrong. When the other kids called me “poof”, “pansy” and “queer”, it didn’t occur to me to report them to a teacher. The last thing I wanted was to draw attention to my sin. It was my own fault I was being bullied. I was consumed by guilt.
When I discuss my childhood, I’m often asked if I was angry that I wouldn’t be able to get married. But in the 1980s, that was the least of my worries. Back then, gay men didn’t even have the same age of consent, and we could be fired from our jobs or evicted from our homes with no protection from the law. The tabloid press denounced us as filth, police commissioners said we were “swirling around in a cesspit” of our own making, and some Tory MPs condemned us as dangerous sexual predators who couldn’t be trusted around children. The Thatcher government brought in a law to back this up – the notorious Section 28 that forbade employees of local authorities from doing anything that might “promote” homosexuality. The emphasis was on straight children and the fear that they could be “converted” or “recruited”. No thought was given to gay children.
The belief that being gay was morally abhorrent was widespread. But it was worse in my Catholic schools. Because homophobia wasn’t just sanctioned by the government – a government opposed by many people, including my parents – it was apparently sanctioned by God. And nobody could argue with that.
So it never occurred to me that one day I’d be able to get married. It never occurred to me that I’d even be happy or find love. I thought my future was to be lonely and die of Aids, which, I heard at school, was God’s punishment for gay men. Gay men were defined by what we did in bed, not by who we loved. As you would often hear in those days, “Queers can’t love.” I would pray to God to stop me from being gay.
It’s because of this that it took me till my 40s to find love. I spent years engaged in self-destruction, smothering my shame with casual sex, booze and partying, behaving exactly as the homophobes had told me I would. Marriage didn’t figure on my agenda, not even when civil partnerships were made legal in 2004. Then I had five years of psychotherapy to work through my feelings and undo the damage. By the time we were given full marriage equality in 2013, I’d started to think that maybe one day I might just find love – and deserve it.
Since then, I’ve written several gay-themed novels at the heart of which is the central character’s journey from shame to self-acceptance. I like to offer my readers hope, contrasting the high levels of acceptance gay men enjoy today with the horrors of the past. That’s probably why I haven’t (yet) explored the impact of religion on the gay psyche. Because most religions haven’t moved on at the same pace as society at large. And with this latest news, Catholicism is still lagging far behind. Now, it grudgingly offers to “bless” unions that it explicitly cannot “approve” of. It’s almost hilariously hypocritical.
I’m angry about it. I was angry when my then-fiance and I wrote the script for our wedding ceremony. I wouldn’t allow any reference to my Catholic background but my husband, who was brought up a modern orthodox Jew, did want us to get married under a chuppah and do the traditional breaking of the glass. I pointed out that this respect for his religion was misplaced seeing as it doesn’t recognise our marriage. But he grew up passing for straight so he wasn’t subjected to the same persecution I faced. He wasn’t wounded by the experience. So I accepted the Jewish elements he wanted. But I insisted on readings by the queer poets Walt Whitman and Carol Ann Duffy. We quoted the gay author James Baldwin and commemorated all the gay men from the past whose love didn’t enjoy the same recognition as ours.
But I wonder what would have happened if I’d wanted to include elements of my Catholic culture. In a way, it was easier for me as I stopped believing in God when I realised the god I was being offered was homophobic. But what about those gay men and women who still believe? Shouldn’t the Catholics among them be entitled to the same marriage rights as everyone else?
So nice try, Pope Francis. But nothing less than equality will work for me. And I’ll take a full apology while you’re at it. Because that’s what I deserve. And only then will my wounds truly heal.
• The headline and main text of this article were amended on 19 December 2023 to refer to the blessing of gay and same-sex “couples”, rather than “marriages” as an earlier version said.
Matt Cain is a writer who was formerly editor-in-chief of Attitude and culture editor of Channel 4 News. His latest novel, One Love, is published on 18 January
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