You know where I stand on this, but if more gay marriage advocates were as open-hearted, realistic as you – and said things like this in public – I might be a supporter of it myself.

I suspect though that if we could ‘fast-forward’ to ‘full equality’ – and, it needs to be admitted, full respectability – to an Ireland (or England) where gay marriage has been ratified, we wouldn’t find that things had loosened up, that all the hang-ups and furious accusations about speaking the truth of male-male couples in front of straight people had gone.

We might find instead that marriage and full respectability had made gay men more dishonest amongst themselves. Gay marriage makes honest women of gay men.