From an editorial in this Sunday’s Los Angeles Times:
With a little more than 2 million members, the Episcopal Church of the United States is far from being the country’s largest Christian denomination. But its recent pronouncements indicating support for openly gay bishops and church blessings for same-sex couples will have reverberations beyond that church, beyond Christianity and even beyond religion. For all the theological issues it raises, acceptance of gays and lesbians at the altar reflects — and affects — the campaign for equality in the larger society.
…As with homophobia, archaic attitudes toward women may be rooted in culture as much as in Scripture.
The strides made by the Episcopal Church thus are especially significant, and especially commendable, because they occur against a backdrop of both cultural and religious resistance. Supporters of Proposition 8 weren’t the only ones to cloak prejudice with piety.
Read it all.