IT doesn't matter that the new Bishop of Reading is homosexual. In my experience as a priest for 30 years and more, I think more than a quarter of all the clergy are homosexual.

So what? Probably a quarter of all bricklayers and master builders are gay as well. Maybe the same goes, God help us, for chartered accountants. It is at this point, of course, that the rancid, holier-than-thou evangelicals surface to tell us that homosexuality is a sin and condemned as such in the Bible - specifically in the Book of Leviticus and in St Paul's Epistle to the Romans.

Fine. What these maudlin puritans fail to tell us is that St Paul has a whole list of sins: pride, envy, vainglory, gluttony, strife and so on. Now this is the issue: if you're going to disqualify a man because he is a homosexual, then why not also disqualify all the gluttons - of which there are many among the evangelicals, I can tell you. I've been to too many of their sordid meetings where they preach against drink and stuff their faces with chocolate cake. I've heard them gossiping and telling tales. I've seen their faces creased with envy at some colleague's success.

So why pick on homosexuality as the only disqualification from holding high office in the church? Christianity has been practised in England for 2,000 years. You would think people would have got the hang of it by now. The message of the Christian faith is very simple. It says we are ALL sinners and that we can't pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, but that we need the forgiving grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's what evangelicals are always shoving down our throats, after all. Why don't they listen to their own gospel? Because they are self-righteous prigs - that's why.

Most homosexuals are like ordinary heterosexuals. They don't want a fuss. They certainly don't want to indulge in an endless parade in which they advertise their sexuality. These so called "gay pride" marches are an obscenity. I'm a married man but I wouldn't dream of putting in an earring, colouring my hair green, donning a leather jacket and (after listening enraptured to a few melodies from Doris Day) processing down Piccadilly shouting to all and sundry: "I slept with the wife last night!"

Unfortunately, we live in an age of crass advertisement in which the distinction between what is public and what is private has been abolished. Everything - including the secrets of all hearts - has to be disclosed these days in something that resembles a gross mixture of the confessional and the circus. Let it be said in plain English: Some Things Are Private - and should be kept that way.

I should like to buttonhole one of these censorious evangelicals who are so condemning of homosexuals. I should like to say to him: "When did you last eat two or three sticky buns too many? When did you last wish slyly that you'd got that cathedral job?" And, if I was going to be really direct, I would say: "Have you ever masturbated? Because that's condemned as a sin by the church as well." And then, in the sure and certain knowledge that without the grace of God I would be in hell too, I would repeat the words of our Saviour: "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone."

* Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.