An Anglican Bishop spoke in Dublin yesterday about his support of marriage equality.

At the signing of his new book the Anglican Bishop of Buckingham, the Right Revd Dr Alan Wilson said, “We don’t have a problem with gay people, the problem is the Church’s hypocrisy”.

Speaking at Books Upstairs, the Church of England Bishop introduced his book More Perfect Union: Understanding Same-Sex Marriage and spoke to an audience of both lay people and clergymen that “people need have nothing to fear from allowing gay people to marry”.

Powerful words from Bishop Alan Wilson about the importance of #MarriageEquality @marriagequality @LGBT @LGBT_news pic.twitter.com/10U37oyaJA

— Books Upstairs (@BooksUpstairs) March 11, 2015

He told the audience that “people need have nothing to fear from allowing gay people to marry […] in England marriage has been available to same -sex couples for a year and the frogs have not come out of the water”.

Bishop Wilson described how the vast majority of people he encountered on his journey toward being in favour of same-sex marriage were not anti-gay, in some cases, they had yet to catch up with modern times. The ultimate aim of his book is to help Christians unite head and heart in a fully positive response to gay people marrying.

He observed that “the debate on same-sex marriage has been male dominated and preoccupied by sex. […] in my book I have tried to show that marriage is about the relationship, not the sex”. He told the audience that his publishers had automatically put two men on the cover of his book but that he requested instead the picture of two women at their wedding.

He said that “many of the arguments against equality for gay people felt like the arguments against women driving in Saudi Arabia.”

The book signing was arranged by the YES campaign group Faith in Marriage Equality, which is itself supported by the Catholic and Church of Ireland groups.