Anglican communion's first openly lesbian bishop

Anglican rift deepens over Episcopalian ordination of lesbian bishop
The Anglican rift over homosexual clergy has grown deeper than ever after the ordination in California of the Church’s first lesbian bishop.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, had previously called the move regrettable and warned that it called into question the place of the US Episcopalian Church in the global Anglican Communion.

Mary Glasspool, 56, was ordained on yesterday in front of 3,000 supporters — and two protesters — in the Long Beach Arena, south of Los Angeles.

Matt Kennedy+: Why nobody seems to care about the consecration of Mary Glasspool
Excerpt: That the Episcopal Church--an evaporating pond already overstocked with committed Muslims, witches and wizards, Sufi dancers, labyrinths, cosmic techno masses, Buddhists, John Spong, Marcus Borg, John Chane, and, yes, many people who engage in sex acts with members of the same sex--tosses an episcopal lesbian into the stagnating water just isn't news. Its sadly obvious that they desperately wanted the attention. They rented an auditorium that seats tens of thousands of people. They were preparing for a vast media presence. You get the sense that they really wanted to recreate that old magic civil rights breaking the barriers feeling--that rush of exhilaration: "Look at me world! I'm a brave revolutionary! I am defending the downtrodden, upholding the outcast, including the excluded!" They wanted the crowds. They wanted the coverage. "Everybody look! Here we are, an historic church. And look what we are doing. We're consecrating a lesbian! Isn't that grand? Aren't we the embodiment of all that the masses long for?"

GetReligion: Beyond the L-word? Ask questions
As you would expect, the Baltimore Sun is in full celebration mode when it comes to the consecration of the Rev. Canon Mary Douglas Glasspool of Annapolis as a new assistant bishop in the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles. This makes sense for all kinds of reasons, in terms of the newspaper’s views of the changes that must be made to help build a better and more enlightened world.

The story, as you would expect, openly admits that this local story about the rise of the Episcopal Church’s first openly lesbian, partnered bishop has national and global elements. Here is the section of the story that makes this clear, while stressing the racial diversity of her new home diocese and its power base of progressive parishes.

Los Angeles and Stuff
It’s not that I hadn’t noticed yet another TEC Bishop who’s in a sexual relationship out of marriage, it’s just that it all seems rather de rigueur these days. In some senses would you expect anything less of a church that has stuck its two fingers up at the rest of the Communion for so long? Consecrating unrepentant sinners and heretics is what they do.

Conservative Anglicans Lament Ordination of 2nd Gay Bishop