Gay N.H. bishop announces retirement

It was sad to read about gay New Hampshire Bishop V. Gene Robinson’s retirement announcement over the past weekend, but it goes without saying this truly remarkable man’s humility, grace, sense of justice, dignity and humor have touched more people--LGBT and otherwise--than anyone can possibly imagine.

The Episcopal Church consecrated Robinson at the University of New Hampshire in Nov. 2003. Members of the Westboro Baptist Church were among the hundreds of people who protested in Durham on that cool November morning. It was quite an eerie sight to see sharpshooters positioned on rooftops around the Whittemore Center--Robinson himself wore a bulletproof vest during the consecration because he had received credible death threats. In spite of the fanfare, rhetoric and outright homophobia that surrounded this watershed moment, however, the vast majority of New Hampshire Episcopalians seemed genuinely uninterested in Gene’s homosexuality.

“New Hampshire is always the place I remain, simply, ‘the bishop,’’’ and not “the gay bishop,’’ said Robinson, as the Boston Globe reported.

Thank you Gene.

Massachusetts Episcopal bishop allows priests to officiate same-sex weddings

More than five years after gays and lesbians began to legally marry in the Bay State, the bishop who oversees Episcopalian priests in Eastern Massachusetts officially granted them permission to officiate nuptials for same-sex couples.

Bishop M. Thomas Shaw III's decision comes a month after local clergy and parishioners endorsed a resolution that expressed hope he would allow priests within the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts to officiate these weddings. He further discussed his decision in an interview with the Boston Globe.

"The time has come," Shaw said. "It’s time for us to offer to gay and lesbian people the same sacrament of fidelity that we offer to the heterosexual world."

Shaw's decision comes more than six years after New Hampshire Episcopalians consecrated openly gay Bishop V. Gene Robinson. And it is sure to further stoke the internal debate within both the American Episcopal Church and the broader Anglican Communion over the role gays and lesbians will continue to play and whether priests should allow same-sex couples to marry.

The Rev. Anne C. Fowler of Jamaica Plain was among those who applauded Shaw's decision to the Globe.

Anglican Church Continues to Struggle With Homosexuality

The latest in a seemingly never-ending series of rows within the Anglican Communion over openly gay New Hampshire Bishop V. Gene Robinson erupted yesterday after the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, declined to invite him to the Lambeth Conference next summer in London. The church holds the gathering every 10 years but the New York Times reported Williams wrote he reserves "the right to withhold or withdraw invitations from bishops whose appointment, actions or manner of life have caused exceptionally serious division or scandal within the communion.

The Episcopal Church -- the American branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion -- consecrated Robinson in 2003 after his New Hampshire congregants overwhelmingly embraced him. Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola and other vocal dissenters within the communion have distanced themselves from the Episcopal Church in response to its support of the openly gay bishop. Robinson's consecration sparked a much needed conversation among the Anglican Communion and other organized religious institutions about the role LGBT can play within them. These debates are often contentious and even painful. Williams' decision to exclude Robinson, however, sends an appalling message to LGBT Anglicans they remain on the margins of the worldwide table.