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On the night before an open hearing about his election as the ninth Bishop of New Hampshire, the Rev. Canon Gene Robinson took his case directly to deputies of the Episcopal Church's General Convention.

"A Conversation With Gene Robinson," which competed with a Convention-sponsored event on global reconciliation, attracted fewer than 100 people to the Episcopal Church of Gethsemane.

Robinson was relaxed, talkative, and energetic. A public radio reporter had set up her recording gear near Gethsemane's pulpit, but Robinson was adamant about not taking the pulpit. "I don't want to be that far away from these people," he said, so the reporter moved to a nearby pew and Robinson stayed near her as he paced the aisle and answered questions for nearly two hours.

Robinson asked reporters to leave all questions to deputies, but he encouraged deputies to ask whatever tough questions they might have.

"Believe me, I have heard things you wouldn't dare say," he said. "Have at me."

Participants in the conversation mostly pitched him softballs, but his answers engaged many of the objections being expressed by conservative Episcopalians.

Robinson expressed frustration that some media accounts have said he left his wife, Isabella "Boo" McDaniel, for his male lover.

"Over a period of years, my wife and I came to believe that I needed to claim who I was as a gay man," Robinson said. "I didn't meet Mark [Andrew] until two months after my ex-wife remarried."

One of Robinson's two daughters attended the evening, and she distributed a statement from her mother in support of Robinson.

"It is my most sincere hope that my former husband, Gene Robinson, receives the Consent of the people of this General Convention," McDaniel wrote. "He is strong and smart. He firmly believes in God and the importance of organized religion for today's people.

"Gene Robinson is a good man, a good priest, a good husband and partner, and a good father. I am proud to have been married to him," McDaniel added. "I am proud to have him as the father of my daughters. I am proud to be associated with him. Mostly, I will be proud to have him be the Bishop here in New Hampshire and in the Episcopal Church."

Robinson addressed a wide range of questions, repeating his contention that if any Anglicans break ties with the Episcopal Church, they're not being driven away. "If they leave it's because they choose to leave and not because I made them. I'm carrying a lot on my shoulders right now, but one thing I'm not willing to carry is the future of the entire Anglican Communion," he said, which prompted the one ovation he received before the end of the evening.

Robinson said he has sought out individual Episcopalians in New Hampshire who are troubled by the prospect of his becoming bishop, and has sometimes talked with them over coffee and desert. "I think we've got to do that on the international level," he said. If people break from the Episcopal Church, "Any time they want to come back, we will be like the father of the Prodigal Son and will welcome them with open arms."

Asked about reparative therapy, in which people seek to change from homosexual to heterosexual patterns of sexual fulfillment, Robinson said, "I think that anyone who chooses to move in a particular direction around their own sexuality should be allowed to do that."

Robinson had told his ex-wife before they married that his relationships had been with men, and he tried to live as a heterosexual (including becoming a parent to his two daughters).

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August (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47