Masturbation and homosexuality are normal and healthy. In mischief mode I can add a moral dimension to cleaning my teeth, having a wee, watering my petunias, staying up too late, watching Bakeoff, forgetting to turn a light off, putting a bit too much butter on my crumpets, lighting the fire, having a glass of wine, using a dishwasher. Go on, try every one of them. Shall I start you off? It's a really easy game. Cleaning my teeth? Think of the energy that went into making that brush and think of its impact when it goes to landfill! Think of the lamentable waste of resources that went into that toothpaste tube! Think of those microcellulose beads that get my teeth nice and shiny then go into the sea with the sewage to kill the fishes! And the waste of water! And I could have cleaned my teeth with a twig and given the money to Oxfam! There, I'll leave you to do the others.

Yep, could sit here all night turning every conceivable activity into a moral issue. Might as well curl up and die a miserable guilty wretch. Easy-peasy! That's what the Catholic Church does with aspects of sex. They turn normal things like being gay, doing a bit of harmless self-pleasuring and trying not to get pregnant too often into guilt fodder. Things that people can't help doing become things that you should be avoiding like the plague 99%-plus of the time. And it's really hard to find out what the Church really thinks or whether it's changed its mind. Which it almost certainly hasn't, deep down.