Surprise! Bishop Gene Robinson plans an active retirement. The Advocate has the story:
Being a trailblazer is never easy, and for Gene Robinson, becoming the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church brought harsh denunciations, harassment, even death threats.
But Robinson, looking back as he prepares to retire at the end of the year, says he was never deterred from his groundbreaking path. “There has never been a time when I didn’t feel this was worth it,” he says. “When you are pursuing God’s dream for a just society, that is worth dying for … it’s a noble thing to pursue.” And he takes great satisfaction from the progress his church and society as a whole have made on LGBT issues since he was elected bishop of New Hampshire in 2003.
Robinson, however, is not just looking back but looking forward. After retiring as bishop, he will be working half-time in Washington, D.C., as a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, the think tank founded by former White House chief of staff John Podesta, where he’ll be writing and speaking on a variety of social issues. The bishop is also the subject of a documentary, Love Free or Die,which will air on PBS October 29 [editor’s note: at 10 p. m. Eastern and Pacific], and he has a new book out, God Believes in Love: Straight Talk About Gay Marriage.