This diocese covers some of America's worst ghettos. I would have to close much of our urban work without these clergy. They are willing to work in places where many heterosexual couples are not willing to go. I know many priests in the Church of England, some in high places, who live secretly and furtively with their partners in hiding. They are welcomed as priests by the Church, but their lives and the lives of their partners are terribly diminished by this dishonesty.
Clandestine living is never wholesome.
This is the place where integrity confronts stated principle. The Church so clearly tolerates this secretiveness privately while condemning what they tolerate publicly. That is even true in very conservative English dioceses like Chichester. My conviction is that we either bless these relationships, recognize them, and undergird them or by not doing so, encourage the very instability and promiscuity that we deplore. I don't understand a Church that believes it can tell people, who are not called to the vocation of celibacy which the Church has always honored, that they must nonetheless live the celibate life.