This argument is caricatured by cutting-edge Radio 4 comedians as belonging to red-faced buffers from the shires blustering: Theyll be saying I can marry my labrador next! But thats plain silly. The point of the incest analogy is to demonstrate that loving commitment isnt a sufficiency for marriage. Unless gay campaigners are saying it should be confined to people who can legally have sex. But that would mean that marriage is only about sexual union, which it isnt (again, see above).

What were considering is what we start to unravel once we make marriage something it hasnt been before. This was not a thought that detained David Cameron, who as prime minister allowed gay marriage as a means of burnishing his socially liberal credentials. Cameron did this, he explained, because he was a Conservative. Thats a matter for the Tories and we shouldnt intrude on private grief. Butthe General Synod has to decide what to do about it.

Its a shame that the Church finds itself at such odds with what a secular state has decided marriage now is. Had we had a new liturgy for blessing civil partnerships in church as we should, if were in the business of blessing Gods love wherever we find it we might have avoided this.

That said, the Church, not for the first time, has an opportunity as well as a responsibility to clear up the mess left after the wedding party by lazy politicians.

George Pitcher is Rector of the parish of Waldron in East Sussex

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I'm a bleeding-heart liberal cleric but the Church of England must not accept gay marriage - Telegraph.co.uk