That old man. That old church. So much to answer for.

The gist of the AP story:

Two months after Pope John Paul II warned that the elevation of V. Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire could mean "serious difficulties" in efforts to unify Catholics and Anglicans, the Vatican announced Tuesday that a February meeting in Seattle to work on a common statement of faith "would have to be put on hold."

The AP headline looks ominous:

Anglican leaders warn against gay bishop

But headline writers notoriously screw up heads to complex stories, and that may well be the case here.

The lead reads just as bad, but the following paragraph seems to soften it:

Oct. 16, 2003  |  LONDON (AP) -- Anglican leaders said Thursday their global communion will be "put in jeopardy" if U.S. Episcopalians proceed with the consecration of their first openly gay bishop.

In a unanimous statement at the end of a two-day crisis meeting on their deep divisions over homosexuality, leaders of 37 national churches called on members not to react precipitously. But they appeared to concede that some parts of the church would cut off communion with the New Hampshire diocese or the whole Episcopal church.

They also called on Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams to establish a commission to study the divisions and report within a year.

Some pretty touching comments from the new gay bishop here. This was interesting:

Robinson said in an interview a day after his confirmation that he was more hurt by friends in the church who did not support him than by opponents who said approving him would shatter the denomination. ...

"Nobody is going to say something to me that I haven't heard before," he said.

But he said he was pained by fellow Episcopalians who told him they respected and loved him but would vote to reject him as bishop of New Hampshire at this week's Episcopal General Convention.

Robinson said he learned on a Web posting that one friend would oppose him. "It really pierced my heart. I was really undefended against it," he said.

The marriage stuff I take personally. Sodomite, sure. Faggit, definitely. But this bishop thing, I was just excited the past couple weeks to see another step in our acceptance. I was only thinking in terms of a struggle for the movement. I wasn't feeling a personal stake in it directly.

But it's been a little over an hour and a half since I got the news, and something unexpected has been happening. I'm starting to feel like a Christian again. Seriously. Writing through my thoughts on the pope and the bible and the primacy of my own conscience helped a lot. (And I can't help snickering at a Catholic hero helping me find my freedom from the misguided Romans to follow him.)

But the elation has passed, and now it feels more like . . . affection? Comfort? Like we're part of the family again. (I know I wrote that in the first few lines of the post below, but I've been adding to that as new thoughts strike me, and that one only arrived there a minute and a half ago.) We're still a lifetime or more away of getting let in to the Roman family I came from, but they're not kidding anybody about being the "one true catholic and apostolic church." They're just one sizeable chunk of the much bigger church of Christians, and one corner of that has finally let us inside. Not just as a member, but a leader.

It's OK. It's OK to be gay, and we can finally filter back in to where we came from. One little church at a time.

(More later, but I haven't eaten since 11 a.m. and I'm losing the energy to man the keyboard.)

GAY BISHOP RATIFIED!

It's true! It's true!

Finally, a bishop of our very own. We're finally part of the family. I dont' know how many cliches I've got in me, feeling like I'm just bursting at the seams with them.

Suddenly the past month, it's feeling like we can really achieve equality in our lifetime. (Maybe).

Headline News reported the latest milestone at exactly 8 p.m. Eastern time. (Right after the commercial.) Sixty-two of the 107 votes in the House of Bishops were in favor. Stories from Reuters, Voice of America, ABC, Newsday . . . (more coming)

Wow. We finally have a gay bishop of a mainline church--who is admitting he's gay and being raised up into the leadership regardless.

The Episcopal church is not so big in the U.S., but quite extensive outside it, in places that remain a bit behind us in attitudes toward homos. (It is part of the 77-million member Anglican Communion.) It could have a big effect there.

And larger U.S. denominations have been struggling with the same question for years, particularly the Methodists and Presbyterians. (And I actually know a Presbyterian, though not an actual presbyter.) They all keep chickening out, and it's always a lot easier once somebody else has taken the plunge. Of course it will be a lifetime or two for my Catholics to get it, but I'll be happy if they just let the women out of the doghouse before I die.)

Meanwhile, conservative Anglican elements have been threatening a schism if Robinson were ratified. (They were going to begin by walking out to pray at a Lutheran church across the street. Lutheran!--What next?)

We'll see how that plays out. Really interesting discussion of the very real moral dilemma the two sides were facing on NPR's Talk of the Nation today. Both the pro- and con-Robinson guests agreed that the schism would probably be minor, though. They said similar dissent wracked the church after ordination of women, institution of the new prayer book and a few other changes this century, but little became of them. (And TOTN has a timeline of the development of Christianity, Judaism and Islam here.)

Phyllis Tickle was particularly insightful on the show. (She is contributing editor in religion at Publisher's Weekly and author of a few books, including The Shaping of a Life: A Spiritual Landscape.) She made a compelling case that the gay-bishop issue was to some degree a stand-in for the much broader and far more important battle between literal interpretations of every word of the bible vs what she called "progressive revelation." She described progressive revelation as the concept that the truth shall be revealed as humanity is ready to receive it.

Interesting. I'm sure the concept is well known in theological circles, but was news to me. It names an idea I think I've believed my whole life, though: That when God was speaking to people just emerging from caves, he was giving them a much simpler guidebook than when they were starting to experiment with planting crops and forging plows, which was still simpler than when they organized into cities, built nations, invented steam engines, laid railroads, left the planet . . . I know my bible-church friends would disagree passionately, because they believe God really did reveal the whole thing all at once, for every culture in every time to understand the same words. I've always thought of Him as a little smarter than that.

I understand why homosexuality was banned at the time of Leviticus. Hygiene was a life or death issue at that point, and sex with your anus, that was just asking for trouble. Same thing with spoiled seafood trichinosis in pork, and many of the other Levitican prohibitions. But homosexuality presented bigger problems than pork: The Australian Prime Minister's lingering fears for the survival of the species was not just very real back then, it was the paramount concern. Now, we're facing the opposite problem on procreation. Now, the whole fabric of society is different. The whole conceivable universe of ethical dilemmas is different. I think I'm only exaggerating a little when I say that I have less in common with one of Abraham's early Israelites than that Israelite had with a caveman.

Is it an exaggeration at all? It wouldn't be hard to make a case that the fairly simple choices available to both of them were more similar in kind than the dilemmas we face today. It was only in the last hundred years or two that many people had the choice of doing anything but toiling in a wheatfield. My people came over from Ireland just over a hundred years ago. I have little doubt that my line is peasantry more or less all the way back to Adam. I was born Catholic because my parents were, because a long line of peasants before them believed as they were told.

Today, I am free to pursue nearly any vocation I choose. I have infinitely more choices and a whole different set of challenges and ethical quandries. I don't think it makes any sense to operate out of the simple rulebook handed down to cavemen or their successors. The Creator I look up to thought things through a little farther than that.

On the Talk of the Nation show, Larry Cunningham, Professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame, brought the esteemed Catholic hero known by the unwieldy title Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman into the debate. He quoted the venerable cardinal's famous last line from his landmark Letter to the Duke of Norfolk (December 27, 1874). Cunningham was taking a different tack with the quote, but I think he unwittingly played right into Tickle's wider point about progressive revelation:

"I shall drink, —to the Pope, if you please, —still, to conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards.”

I don't think Newman was talking just about popes. I think God is still guiding us along with new insights every day, and we need to look inside to our own hearts to hear them. (To hear Him, if you prefer.) I look at that ancient book on the table and I see a lot of wisdom. But I think He expects a lot more out of me than just following a rulebook written as instruction manual for goat farmers. I shall drink, —to the Bible, if you please, —still, to conscience first, and to the Bible afterwards.

You know touchers: those people who don't just shake your hand when they shake your hand, they also reach forward with the left and grip your forearm? Or they put their hand on your shoulder when they talk to you?

Jocks are well known for this--the kind who are very straight and very comfortable with their sexuality, and aren't afraid to touch a guy. (And know the difference between a grope and a touch.) Salesmen are known for it as well. And caregivers: some doctors, a whole lot of clergy.

Most people respond really well to it, and I think most of us actually wish we felt a little more comfortable doing it a bit more, but are a little shy about some contact and hold back.

Some people hate it. They don't like anyone touching them at all. They see it as a boundary violation. But most of them realize there are more touchers than frigids out there and it is more of their problem than the touchers'. If they don't like it, they know how to speak up.

I wondered if this whole fake scandal about Bishop Robinson could possibly just be nothing more than an accusation that he was a toucher. Kind of sounded like it could be from the vagueness of the acusation, but surely . . . Surely!

From AP story (and much longer excerpts from the official report here):

[Investigating Bishop Gordon] Scruton said he spoke with [acuser] Lewis by phone Monday afternoon and Lewis told him that, at a public church event in November 1999, Robinson "put his left hand on the individual's arm and his right hand on the individual's upper back" as Robinson answered a question Lewis had asked.

Scruton said the other encounter occurred when Lewis turned to make a comment to Robinson and the clergyman "touched the individual's forearm and back while responding with his own comment."

Unbelievable. Bishop Gene Robinson is a toucher. (And Robinson touched him in broad daylight, in public, at a church gathering.) So freaking what?

Here's what:

Those conservative "men of God" who pushed both these faux scandals really need to go home and rethink their devotion to the creed they claim to be supporting. This was disgraceful.

And both charges were pushed by conservative church leaders. I heard an NPR reporter describe several times today how they called her at 11 p.m. Sunday night trying to get her to break the story, saying that it would look a lot better coming from her than them. (Yeah, no kidding.) She could not reach the accuser and had no way to substantiate the allegations, so she held back, and they went forward themselves on Monday. (NPR also reported that CNN was approached the same night.)

Do Episcopalians have confession? When are these guys lining up?

And then we come to the slimy performance of Fred Barnes and the Weekly Standard on the periphery of all this. Barnes, executive editor of the Standard, and supposed supporter of family values, was pushing the other phony 11th-hour "scandal" attempting to subvert the will of the Episcopal church. He posted this irresponsible story on the conservative mag's website at 2:48 p.m. Monday, leading with a paragraph of heavy insinuation and half-truths that took the church all of 24 hours to dismiss with this statement:

The questions about Robinson's role in a Web site for a group he founded that contained links to pornography showed Robinson's involvement with the group ended four years before the Web site was created.

Funny how Barnes couldn't crack that conundrum. Surely he realized how bogus it was, but spread it anyway to undermine the character of a new bishop, in order to deny his appointment. Nice values Fred.

(And the website accusation may be turning out to be even more bogus. CNN's reporter Jeff Flock is also saying on CNN Headline at this very moment that the Barnes' explicit charge--he wrote "Outright had a link to a pornographic website"--is not true. (Flock is not naming Barnes, just straightening out the facts.) He says the site did NOT link to a porn site (horrors! anyway). Here is his description: "He had a connection to an organization that had a website, that if you clicked on that website, then clicked on several other links, it took you to another website to another website, eventually you got a pornographic website." Oh, brother. If Flock turns out to be correct--and I assume he is working off the latest information--the charge will really be ludicrous. And despicable. I would venture a guess that most sites on the web are two to three degrees of separation from a porn site. Next we're going to learn he has a hairdresser that has a cousin that subscribes to Hustler!

The horror.

---

Update: Just found this great editorial in the Min Star-Trib, Robinson Ambush/Anatomy of a Smear:

The phony accusation that Robinson was linked somehow to porn on the Web was easy to track down. It was a deliberate, calculated lie, apparently held in reserve until the last minute in case the first vote, in the House of Deputies, went against those opposed to Robinson's elevation to bishop -- which it did on Sunday.

... the smear is an issue for the larger community as well, for it demonstrates just how low some people will stoop when honest, reasonable debate is going against them. ...

Years ago, Robinson helped organize the Concord, N.H., chapter of Outright, a group that, essentially, ministers to young gay and lesbian people. He has had little contact with the group in recent years, and had nothing to do with its Web site, as the group has confirmed.

At Outright Web site that Robinson had nothing to do with, you find links to nine Outright groups in Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire. One or more of them once had a link to bisexual.org, a support site for bisexual people. At bisexual.org, in the bottom left corner, is a link to "3 pillows."

If you click that link, you get a bisexual.org splash screen telling you that "Three Pillows is the net's premiere site for bisexual erotica." If you click the link in this window, you get a Three Pillows warning page: "Warning -- Adult Content Ahead! You must be over 18 to proceed. Three Pillows contains adult erotica of a bisexual nature."

If you click the "Enter" link, you get a fairly explicit page with the naughtiest bits blanked out. To actually see the explicit stuff, you must become a member and pay for the privilege.

That's, what, seven clicks and a Visa card from the Outright page that Robinson had nothing to do with? As one online wag said, you can get from the conservative Weekly Standard to porn in just two clicks: to Salon, then to porn. Frankly, porn is much closer than seven clicks to Startribune.com as well. Everything on the Web is a few clicks away from porn; that's the Web.

The Weekly Standard is important in this. Executive Editor Fred Barnes gave the Robinson story a major boost -- after it was shopped to other news outlets that refused to bite -- when he posted information about the controversy on the magazine's Web site Monday. Barnes asserted that, "Episcopalian bishop-elect Gene Robinson has some curious affiliations," meaning the porn Web site.

No he doesn't, but Barnes does. He's not simply a journalist in this; he's a conservative Episcopalian of outspoken views who sits on the board of the Institute on Religion and Democracy. ... Robinson appears guilty of nothing at all -- save being a gay man who wants to be a bishop. For some, unfortunately, that is enough to justify all sorts of innuendo and dirty tricks. Be warned: This is the way they play.

End of a short-lived, ill-advised smear campaign.

From Reuters:

Tue August 5, 2003 05:21 PM ET

MINNEAPOLIS (Reuters) - Episcopal church leaders on Tuesday dismissed allegations of sexual misconduct against New Hampshire's openly gay bishop-elect, clearing the way for a vote by church bishops that is likely to approve his installation.

The results of an investigation of Canon Gene Robinson were announced just one day after the bishops suddenly delayed their vote amid allegations he touched a Vermont parishioner inappropriately.

Massachusetts Bishop Gordon Scruton, who led the investigation, told the bishops that the parishioner, David Lewis, described the touching to him but it did not appear to be sexual in nature and Lewis did not want to press charges.

The questions about Robinson's role in a Web site for a group he founded that contained links to pornography showed Robinson's involvement with the group ended four years before the Web site was created.

Leaders of the Episcopal church have already finished their investigation of the church's first openly gay bishop-elect, and will vote on final ratification this afternoon. AP reports that he was apparently cleared. NPR said to expect an announcement of the verdict around 6 p.m. Eastern time.

I'll try to have the results up as soon as they are announced.

A certain David Lewis waited until the day the first openly gay bishop was ordained by a mainstream denomination to charge the new bishop as a "skirt chaser."

His final ratification vote scheduled for today was just delayed indefinitely to investigate the charges. (No bishop has been refused ratification since 1934.)

Reuters just reported this:

A copy of an e-mail obtained by Reuters that was sent to Vermont Bishop Thomas Ely from a man identified as David Lewis accused New Hampshire Bishop-elect Gene Robinson of being a "skirt-chaser" who fondled him two years ago.

"My personal experience with him is he does not maintain appropriate boundaries with men. I believe this is an alarming weakness of character that alone makes Gene unsuitable for the office of bishop," the note, dated Sunday, said.

Sounds damn fishy to me.

I'll add to this post as news develops. AP has a story with more background but fewer details on the allegations.

He won the first vote yesterday. The final vote is today (Monday). If he wins, he'll become the first openly gay bishop from a mainline denomination. Emphasis on "openly" of course. Here's the opening of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution story:

Gay bishop on way to win

MINNEAPOLIS -- The Episcopal Church moved one step closer to making history Sunday when an openly gay man won the first of two votes he needs to become a bishop.