Climbing Brokeback Mountain with the Anglicans
David C. Steinmetz
Special to the Sentinel
Posted March 21, 2006

The Episcopal Church USA, the American branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion, will hold its triennial convention in Columbus, Ohio, on June 13-21. Ordinarily a meeting of this kind would be of no interest whatever to the 295 million Americans who are not Episcopalians and only of limited interest to the 2.3 million Americans who are.

But at its last convention in 2003, the Episcopal Church caught the attention of an otherwise indifferent public by consenting to the election of an openly gay man, V. Gene Robinson, as the bishop of New Hampshire. The action represented a break with a longstanding policy in almost all Christian churches banning gay ordination.

Needless to say, the election of Bishop Robinson met with a mixed response in the 77 million-member Anglican Communion. Liberals around the world hailed his election as an important step forward in the full inclusion of gays in the life of the church.

Conservatives were not so sanguine. While they admitted that there were prohibitions in the Bible that had never been or were no longer binding on Christians, they did not think that the traditional ban on gay sex was among them. The rest