Polis has teamed up with His Holiness Pope Benedict for this year’s Christmas Appeal. We are dropping our efforts to combat climate change in favour of joining the Vatican in its new bid to rid the world of the plague of homosexuality and transexuality.

You might think that global warming, financial meltdown, resource depletion, and conflict in the Middle East and Africa should attract our charitable impulses this Yuletide. But the Holy Father and Polis have decided that saving the male part of our race from the delights of Judy Garland, the Pet Shop Boys and Peter Mandelson are what really matters:

“If tropical forests deserve our protection, humankind… deserves it no less,”

I will be acting personally by inviting my old friend Richard to reconsider his decade-long relationship with John. They thought it had brought them happiness, companionship and a loving friendship that has illuminated their friends’ lives as well as their own. Now I must inform him that he is as big a threat to humanity as the airline industry.

Even I, a season ticket holder at West Ham and a father of two, have been tempted. Just recently I found myself enjoying Brokeback Mountain on DVD in the privacy of my own home. If there is anyone out there who wants to save me from these impulses then email me at the usual address.

I leave the last word to some other fans of the Pope’s sense of humour over at the Queer Youth Network:

“I love the Pope, who else is there to laugh at during Christmas? We have the Queen’s speech, but we all know that’s written by Mr.Brown. The Pope’s speeches are his own words, and it is hilarious!”