Rev Richard Coles ‘frustrated’ Church of England is resisting LGBT equality

The celebrity vicar, who moved to Friston, near Seaford in late April, said the Church “is behind even professional football”.

He said: The big battle for LGBT people in the Church of England has been trying to get for us the equal treatment that the rest of the world is used to.

Revered Richard Coles

“We’ve heard the remarkable story of the 17-year-old footballer coming out, the first pro-footballer to do it while still having a career since Justin Fashanu.

“Credit to Jake Daniels, it’s an amazing thing and lots of people have said it’s long overdue that football should have taken so long to welcome its first openly gay player.

“Lots of us who are LGBT are in the Church but the Church at the moment resists giving us equal status which you would expect and enjoy anywhere else.

Richard Coles was a contestant on BBC Strictly Come Dancing

“That can be frustrating sometimes. I don’t want to pretend it’s just an easy matter, it’s not. It requires a lot of people to come a long way.

Richard, whose civil partner David died in 2019, said he has been fighting this fight for more than 40 years and is a “bit weary” of it.

The former Strictly Come Dancing star said: “Churches are notoriously slow to move because we tend to walk to a different beat to everybody else and also we have a long heritage.

“We have 2,000 years behind us which we reflect on daily, that doesn’t bother me so much… it’s when it moves in reverse that it bothers me.

“A lot of the arguments at the moment are being made by people in the Church who take a very conservative view and think that there is no version of the Church in which LGBT people should be treated equally with everybody else.

“I’ve been fighting this fight for more than 40 years and I’m a bit weary of it actually