Gene Robinson - Election As Bishop

Election As Bishop

Robinson was elected bishop by the New Hampshire diocese on June 7, 2003, at St. Paul's Church in Concord. Thirty-nine clergy votes and 83 lay votes were the threshold necessary to elect a bishop in the Diocese of New Hampshire at that time. The clergy voted 58 votes for Robinson and the laity voted 96 for Robinson on the second ballot. The Episcopal Church requires in its Canon 16 that the election procedure and the candidate who is elected be subjected to review and must be consented to by the national church. No objections were raised to the procedure of the election. If diocesan election occurred within 120 days (3 months) of a General Convention, canon law requires consent by the House of Deputies and then the House of Bishops at the General Convention itself. Consent to the election of Robinson was given in August at the 2003 General Convention. The General Convention of 2003 became the center for debate over Robinson's election, as conservatives and liberals within the Church argued over whether Robinson should be allowed to become bishop. Some conservative factions threatened a schism within both the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion should Robinson be elected. Before the House of Deputies can vote on a resolution, a legislative committee must examine the piece of legislation first. The Committee on the Consecration of Bishops held a two-hour hearing on Robinson's election and supporters and opponents were allowed to speak. One of the speakers was Robinson's daughter, Ella, who read a letter from his ex-wife Boo in strong support of Robinson. The House of Deputies, which consists of laypersons and priests, voted in the affirmative: the laity voted 63 in favor, 32 opposed, and 13 divided; the clergy voted 65 in favor, 31 opposed, and 12 divided.

Robinson won the first two of three votes required for his election to be ratified, but allegations suddenly arose in August 2003 that Robinson had inappropriately touched a male parishioner and had connections with OutRight.org, which at the time carried a link to AllThingsBi.com, a resource site for bisexual people that included links to pornography sites. The final vote was postponed to address these last-minute charges. David W. Virtue, a critic of gay ordination, brought up the pornography allegation, claiming that: "Gene Robinson's website is linked by one click to 5,000 pornographic websites." When no such link was found on the Diocese of New Hampshire web page profiling the bishop-elect, Virtue stated that the link was on the website of an organization Robinson supported. Robinson was already known to be associated with Outright, a secular organization for the support of young LGBT people. Fred Barnes, a Fox News commentator, repeated the allegations on the website of The Weekly Standard. On the day the allegations arose, the website issued a press release stating that it had removed the offending link, that it had been unaware of the pornographic links on allthingsbi.com, and that Robinson had no involvement with that particular chapter of Outright.

The male parishioner of Manchester, Vermont (in a diocese neighboring Robinson's) who had alleged the "touching," was then reported to have said, during the investigating committee's telephone call with him, that the acts in question were two separate occasions of what felt to him like intentionally seductive arm-squeezing and back-stroking, although in a public setting. The man acknowledged that others might have regarded the two incidents as "natural," yet the incidents were disturbing to him nonetheless. The investigating committee's report also stated that man regretted having used the word "harassment" in his e-mail, and that man declined an invitation to bring formal charges. After a two-day investigation, neither allegation proved of merit. The House of Bishops voted for Robinson in the affirmative, with 62 in favor, 43 opposed, and 2 abstaining.