I started work on this book after a conversation I had with Elizabeth Stuart about our disappointment at Rowan Williams's failure to bring the Anglican church into the present tense and accept its homosexual clergy. We felt it was a pity that so many ministers would have to continue to hide their sexuality rather than present a model of spirituality to their congregations that was derived from their particular gift. We agreed that all gifts were from God, and sexuality was one of those gifts, as blindness is my new gift.

I have always been homosexual, but am newly blind. What my new gift taught me was that God's gifts may be meant to challenge us, and this book will argue that the challenging experience of homosexuality has led many British writers of the twentieth century to find new ways of expressing their spirituality outside mainstream Anglicanism. This seems to me to be a great loss to the Church, and though I have now rejoined, my attendance is something more like an armed truce than an untroubled communion. A catholic church ought to welcome all people with all their gifts in all roles. If we are the body of Christ then should I not be able to be his feet, his hands or his mouth according to my gift? But my experience as a homosexual has been one of rejection and incomprehension.