HOMOSEXUAL priests in the Church of England will be allowed to “marry” their boyfriends under a proposal drawn up by senior bishops, led by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The decision ensures that gay and lesbian clergy who wish to register relationships under the new “civil partnerships” law — giving them many of the tax and inheritance advantages of married couples — will not lose their licences to be priests.

They will, however, have to give an assurance to their diocesan bishop that they will abstain from sex. The bishops are trying to uphold the church doctrine of forbidding clergy from sex except in a full marriage. They accept, however, that the new law leaves them little choice but to accept the right of gay clergy to have civil partners.

The decision is likely to reopen the row over homosexuality that has split the worldwide Anglican communion. It may also overshadow an international meeting of senior bishops next month designed to heal rifts between liberals and conservatives over the issue.

The Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement estimates that within five years 1,500 homosexual Anglican clergy will have registered under the new law, which comes into force on December 5.

The Church of England proposal is contained in a draft Pastoral Statement on Civil Partnerships, drawn up by Graham James, the Bishop of Norwich. It was discussed at length and provisionally agreed at a meeting last week at a hotel in Market Bosworth, Leicestershire.

A final draft with some amendments will be produced for approval by the House of Bishops, the upper house of the church’s General Synod.

Under the proposal, a priest intending to register a civil partnership would inform his or her bishop in a face-to-face meeting. The priest would then give an undertaking to uphold the teaching of the Church of England, outlined in the 1991 document Issues in Human Sexuality. This paper prohibits sex for gay clergy.

Although no sanctions are included in the new proposal, it is expected that a breach of the rules may lead to disciplinary action or the possible suspension of clergy.

Some bishops, however, are uncomfortable about subjecting their priests to the proposed interviews.

One said this weekend: “We all have clergy in gay partnerships in our dioceses and there is a genuine reluctance on the part of a number of us to make their lives more difficult.”

Some clergy in other churches have already made their intentions public. Last week, it emerged that Debbie Gaston, a lesbian minister from Brighton, and Elaine Cook, her girlfriend of 16 years, intend to register a civil partnership. The couple, originally Baptists, now belong to the Metropolitan Community Church, whose members are largely gay and transsexual.

The bishops have also agreed to a government request to change ecclesiastical law to favour civil partners. A change to the Pluralities Act of 1838, for example, will enable gay partners to occupy vicarages for up to two months after the death of a priest.

The Anglican Consultative Council is meeting in Nottingham on June 21 to try to heal the rift caused by the American church’s decision in 2003 to ordain the openly gay Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire. It led 22 Anglican provinces, mainly in Africa and Asia, to break off relations with the American church.

The most entrenched conservatives include Peter Akinola, Primate of Nigeria, who has called homosexuality an “aberration unknown even in animal relationships”.

Williams, who was enthroned as archbishop in 2003, has been dogged by the issue of homosexuality. He withdrew his initial support for the appointment of Jeffrey John, a gay priest, as Bishop of Reading after the furious reaction of conservatives and evangelicals and angered gay rights activists.

Additional reporting: Tak-Sang Li

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