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The consecration [of Gene Robinson as an openly gay Episcopal bishop] was a vindicating moment for many Episcopalians who have long hoped the church would formally acknowledge the many gay men and lesbians who are priests, deacons and laypeople.
Stephanie Spellers, who attended the consecration with a group of fellow students from the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass., said: "Especially for me as an African-American, I am pretty sensitive to people saying you don't have a place in the church. God makes holy what people shove away, and I'm here just to celebrate that."
But for many others, the consecration will be remembered as a painful moment in which their church decided to endorse sin. At an appointed moment during the ceremony, the crowd was asked if there were any objections to Bishop Robinson's installation. A laywoman from New Hampshire, a priest from Pittsburgh and a bishop from Albany stepped to the microphone one by one.
The priest, the Rev. F. Earle Fox, read an explicit list of what he said were the sexual practices of gay men, but was interrupted by the official leading the consecration, Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold of the Episcopal Church. Proceeding with his speech, Father Fox concluded that people who are "made in God's loving image would not engage in or bless or consecrate such behavior."
The layperson, Meredith Harwood, a parishioner at St. Mark's Church in Ashland, N.H., said, "We must not proceed with this terrible and unbiblical mistake, which will not only rupture the Anglican Communion; it will break God's heart." And Suffragan Bishop David Bena of the Diocese of Albany said he carried greetings from 36 other bishops in the United States and Canada who objected to Bishop Robinson's installation.
The dissenting Episcopalians then filed silently out of the arena and left to join a prayer service at a nearby evangelical church.
Bishop Griswold, leading the consecration, thanked "our brothers and sisters in Christ for bringing their concerns before us." But, he said, "The bases of their objections put forward are well known and I think have been considered." He mentioned that Bishop Robinson had been elected by the Diocese of New Hampshire in June and approved by the general convention of the Episcopal Church in August.
Bishop Griswold acknowledged that the move could cause divisions in his church and in the Anglican Communion, but he said that what holds the church together is more fundamental than one bishop.
"As Anglicans we're learning to live the mystery of communion at a much deeper level," he said.
-- New York Times, November 3, 2003
A gay man raised in a homophobic culture such as exists in the United States of America will face special psychological obstacles to spiritual growth that a non-gay person might not face. Late 20th century-early 21st Century American culture tends to stigmatize gay identities with Judeo-Christian moral and religious justifications. Not only is the gay man labeled “unnatural” and “perverted,” his very being is said to be an affront to God. The tender psyche of a child who will develop a gay identity cannot but be scarred by such abusive attitudes that permeate our culture. His emotional development, his natural love for other males, is cruelly repressed. His spiritual self conception may be even more damaged, fearing that he will face external damnation for his natural impulses. Even if he survives, this kind of emotional and spiritual abuse may push him to the margins of society where he may act out his pain and humiliation in self-destructive ways, feeling he has no connection with the rest of society and therefore nothing to be lost by rejecting its standards….
Spiritual damage may require special attention. One’s concept of God must come to include the conviction that God is gay. For a gay tantric to identify fully with his chosen deity as a step toward full self-realization, he must regard the deity as the source of his being, and this has to include his gay being. The concept of deity must be no less than what we ourselves are although it can exceed what we are. If any human being can be gay and possess the unique understanding that a gay identity confers, the insider’s view, then God, too, must minimally be capable of sharing that viewpoint; God, too, must be gay, at the very least.
-- William Schindler, Gay Tantra
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