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He's a wonderful, compassionate and knowledgeable person.
I think they had a wealth of candidates to choose from. In choosing a bishop, you have to balance a lot of factors. The bishop has to be a good administrator, a good public speaker, and a good counselor, since (s)he--yes, there are a couple of women bishops now-- is the immediate supervisor of all the parish priests and has a private meeting with each of them each year.
I've met Gene Robinson, and he's just a fine person all around. No wonder the people of New Hampshire voted him in. When you have someone that good, sexual orientation falls under the category of "Details! Details!" (Which is as it should be.)
It's like the time my parish in Portland had a gay transitional (on his way to ordination as a priest) deacon for a year. When the time came to sponsor him for ordination, we did so enthusiastically, because we knew he'd be a wonderful priest. We didn't even know he was gay till halfway through the year. We were delighted to host his ordination, which was covered in the local paper and attracted one solitary protestor.
Having recently been through the election of a bishop in Oregon, I know that the candidates have to appear at a series of forums to which everyone is invited.
Something funny happened during that election. Oregon has a huge cultural divide between the urban and rural areas, with southern Oregon outside of Ashland being particularly conservative.
The man eventually chosen as bishop is of Asian Indian descent, and after the candidates' forum in Portland, people were saying, "He's terrific, but are the rural areas ready for a person of color?"
We heard from "sources" that after the rural forums, people were saying about the same man, "He's terrific, but I bet he's not wacko enough for those liberals in Portland."
So in spite of themselves, both sides were happy with the outcome. :-)
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