After years of watching The Devil Wears Prada and Sex and the City and preferring the products of Habitat and Ikea to Adidas and Puma, you finally acknowledge that there may be trouble ahead. What to do, though? Even if you tell your parents gently that you are having issues with your sexual identity, you know that they will either pretend they didn’t hear you or that you should seek counsel from the parish priest. You might as well tell him that all this time he thought you were human you were really a horse. If he’s not actually gay himself he’ll simply say: “Take two paracetamol and lie down until the feeling goes away.”

This is why we really ought not to be surprised by the number of gay men who continue to join the Catholic priesthood