Churchill said the navy survived on “rum, sodomy and the lash”. Clerics may prefer sherry to rum, but otherwise God’s house has much in common with Admiralty House. As that soft Church of England handshake after evensong hints, cassocks, like bellbottoms, have long provided camouflage for homosexuals.

What’s changed is that a few in holy orders have, rather bravely, dared to come out. If your vicar says he is going to heaven he is not necessarily being spiritually presumptuous; he might be off to his preferred London nightclub.

Stiff old-worlders have reacted to this outbreak of openness with fury. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, was caught up recently in the fracas over the appointment of Canon Jeffrey John, a homosexual, as Bishop of Reading. The cleric subsequently withdrew after Williams failed to support him. In America last week, Gene Robinson was confirmed, not merely a bachelor, but a bishop. He is the first openly gay bishop in the Anglican communion. His grace’s other half? One Mark Andrew, who must learn sharpish how to cut the ribbon at openings of village fetes.

The “H” word, Robinson says, is not homosexuality, but honesty. “I can’t find a conservative in the bunch that claims you in Britain or we in America don’t have privately gay bishops. So should the church punish honesty now?” Suck on that, hetero bigots.

But Robinson’s Episcopal church is part of the 70m worldwide Anglican church, which could shatter under the weight of the first communion wafer he proffers as Bishop of New Hampshire. Which places Rowan Williams, as head of the church, in his worst crisis since, well, the last crisis.

Says Robinson: “I am sure this will put further pressure on him and make it very difficult.” Robinson is dead right. Last Friday, Williams called an urgent meeting of world church leaders in October to discuss the consequences of Robinson’s appointment.

Flushed with excitement after his election, he says defiantly that Britain has no power to block his promotion. “No other primate has authority over the Episcopal church; nor, I might add, does the archbishop.” Oh dear, you’d better make this the archbishop’s biggest crisis yet.

In everything bar sexuality, Robinson, 56, is straight: short, neatly trimmed greyish hair, little button eyes and a polite, cheery amiability. He neither acts nor sounds remotely camp. On the day after his appointment is finally ratified I find him taking an afternoon nap, so overcome is he by the strain; an unlikely hate figure.

But to fundamentalists in America, who launched a witch-hunt last week to scupper his ordination, and Africa — threatening to break free from the colonial yoke of Lambeth Palace, disgusted by the West’s heathen ways — he has become the Antichrist. “I’m demonised as Satan or taken to be some saint, and the truth is I’m neither,” he yawns.

An unfortunate name, Gene. It smacks of a 1970s porn star. But wait for his real first name: Vicky. His father, a tobacco farmer, declared it didn’t matter if the baby had a girl’s name as the birth was so precarious he was unlikely to survive; both a birth and death certificate were prepared.

But even this paternal insensitivity could not prepare him for the cheap jibes he endured last week, even from bishops. One so-called Christian supposedly “proved” Robinson’s connection to a porno website, and another claimed Robinson harassed him.

Having just been cleared by the inquiry, he enjoyed a decisive election victory (bishops, like rat catchers and presidents, are elected in America). But still the bitterness boils.

“The timing of these claims was curious to say the least,” says Robinson with studied understatement. He insists the website, for a group helping the young troubled by their sexuality, was actually six clicks away from anything pornographic; besides, when he broke with the group four years ago, it didn’t even have a website.