Go Forth and Multiply

Although the Church of England both does and does not accept homosexuality, the unmarried at least may now consider themselves entitled to a less equivocal welcome; though naturally for all the wrong reasons. After only two years of extensive research, a commission has proclaimed its strong belief that single people must be valued, on the grounds that Jesus Himself was single. In fact, as a rural peasant and a violently reactionary Jew, the Saviour had almost certainly been married at least once by the time He started preaching His cult at the age of thirty, in what for His time and place counted as early middle age. His Church's dirty-minded predilection for celibacy, and the divinely-ordained abuses which follow from it, date at the earliest from the fourth century after His death. Assuming that mentions of His preference for marriage over burning have not been expunged by Christian witch-hunters (at least one non-canonical gospel states that the male disciples were jealous over His favouritism towards Mary Magdalene), His marital status may simply have been considered too obvious to mention; conversely, the Pharisees, Sadducees and other Jewish enemies of Jesus would certainly not have refrained from comment at the scandal of an unmarried rabbi. Indeed, unless the Immaculate Conception invalidated all her qualifications as a Jewish mother, the Virgin Mary's silence on the subject would be implausible to say the least.