My brother, the priest with Aids
In a deeply moving memoir, author Rosemary Bailey reflects on the sibling she lost more than 20 years ago and the important role he still plays in her life today
We learnt that my brother, the Rev Simon Bailey, an Anglican priest, was Hivpositive in 1992. It was seven years after he was diagnosed. He had told no one until then, but he was becoming increasingly ill. Our father, a Baptist minister, had died earlier that year and he told my mother first, just before she was due to visit me in London, and so she had the task of telling me. We’d had our suspicions – my sister, a nurse, had checked out his medications – but it was still devastating news. We sat and wept.
Simon had been diagnosed at the age of 30, just a few weeks before he was due to take up his first post as a vicar in the tough South Yorkshire mining village of Dinnington. It was 1985 and “the gay plague” was still only a frightening rumour. Thatcher’s tombstone warning brochures were still being postponed as rather distasteful. Death seemed inevitable.
We had been brought up as strict Baptists. Our father was the minister, and his fierce evangelical Christianity dominated our lives, both at home and in church. What it must have been like for
Simon as an adolescent with his awakening sexuality, I can only imagine. Not only was it considered a sin, but until 1967 it had also been considered a crime.
While I pursued a career as a writer, Simon went to Oxford to study English intending to become a Baptist minister but he instead chose to be confirmed into the Anglican church when he was 21.
Perhaps encouraged by the freer spirit of the era, it was around this time that he started to come out and confided in me, his older sister, that he was gay – “and not celibate either,” he said. He loved dancing. He fell in love. He explored his developing spirituality and sexuality in his journals and poetry. He asked himself: “Did I really believe God disapproved?” He answered: “No, I didn’t.”
Then, after four years as a curate in a parish near Sheffield, came the HIV diagnosis. Simon described his response to me later: “It was a moment of crisis. I felt there was no time to waste, when I discovered how serious it was… I remember sitting, thinking, is priesthood what I want? And I immediately did three things: I joined the Movement for the Ordination of Women, the Gay and Lesbian Christian Movement, and the CND.” So he arrived in Dinnington “glad to be gay” – but also Hiv-positive. He immersed himself in the parish of St Leonard’s, getting to know everyone. The miners’ strike had only recently ended, and a deep bitterness remained. Dinnington had stood firm during the action, and after several months there was real deprivation, in the face of which the community and Simon rallied round. No one had asked Simon if he was gay when he was interviewed for the job. It wasn’t really a conscious factor then, though in today’s more sensitised climate, it would be much more likely. He said he chose not to tell them, in part, because he didn’t want to become a “single issue” priest.
“It is an important part of my life but not the main part. Being an openly gay priest would inevitably attract the kind of attention that would make it the major feature of your life.” So it is ironic that he was destined to become not just known for being gay, but for having Aids as well.
Gradually, of course, people got to know he was gay. And by the time he finally became ill, and told them he had Aids, there was no question of him leaving the parish. A core group of supporters who loved him declared their willingness to look after him. By then he was one of their own.
But Simon still worried about unwelcome attention – and it soon came. Someone from the village had called The Sun and a local reporter came round to the rectory looking for a story. Simon remembered it as probably the worst moment of his life. Despite our fears, however, the story never appeared.
Simon’s health continued to deteriorate. But he was determined to continue in his ministry in the church. It was what was keeping him alive.
He was overwhelmed with offers from friends and parishioners, and for almost two years a faithful rota of carers looked after him.
A visiting archdeacon came to a prayer meeting in the rectory and was astonished to see everyone seated comfortably round Simon on his intravenous drip. The archdeacon was so moved he suggested that the story could be made public. There was much debate, but eventually it was agreed to make a BBC TV documentary called Simon’s Cross.
The programme, broadcast in January 1995, produced a phenomenal response – hundreds and hundreds of letters – sympathetic, supportive, but many also pouring out their own problems: gay and straight, bereaved, grieving, carers and people with Aids themselves.
As we commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act, which partially decriminalised homosexuality, it seems important to return to my brother’s story, to remember his courage and the profound support he was shown.
He died on Sunday, Nov 25 1995, surrounded by friends and family, with candles, music and prayers. Until the end, we talked through everything he had felt and been through and, with his approval, I started writing a book about his life, which was published two years after he died. Twenty years later, the book is now being republished and I realise what an enormous debt I owe him for the trust he placed in me.
He relished every moment he had left. Perhaps he did have a natural vocation, a natural gentleness, spirituality and empathy with others, but it was also out of his oppression that he could find something meaningful. He had already suffered in secret simply for being homosexual. In an odd way, it prepared him. And it began a process into which he drew many people, not least me, his sister. The new edition of Scarlet Ribbons: A
Priest with Aids is published on July 29 by Jorvik Press. (Jorvikpress.com) Available from all good bookshops and Amazon, priced £15.95
‘I owe him an enormous debt for the trust he placed in me’