The Episcopal Diocese of Albany is weighing changes to local church law that will likely touch off fresh controversy around homosexuality and marriage issues when they come up for a vote next month.<\/p>\n
One resolution mandates that only a person who is in a heterosexual marriage or “celibate and abstinent” can be eligible for ordination as a priest or consecration as a bishop. Another holds that only heterosexual marriages can be celebrated or blessed in the diocese — and marriage between a man and a woman is the only kind of union permitted on diocesan or parish property.<\/p>\n
Clergy and lay delegates will vote on the proposals during the 19-county Albany Episcopal Diocese’s annual convention June 6-8 in Speculator. The debate comes at a time of renewed national attention to gay marriage in the wake of a California Supreme Court decision allowing it.<\/p>\n
Homosexuality has been a flash point in the Episcopal Church since the 2003 consecration of V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire as its first openly gay bishop, a move condemned by the conservative leadership of the Albany Diocese.<\/p>\n
Supporters of the proposals counter that they are consistent with traditional church teaching.<\/p>\n
“The national church has gone off the rails,” said Torre Bissell, a lay person who runs a diocesan intercessory ministry and has asked on a blog that people pray for passage of both measures.<\/p>\n