First openly gay Episcopal bishop announces divorce from husband
The US Episcopal Church’s first openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson, has announced that he and his husband are to divorce.
Robinson announced that he and huband Mark Andrew were to divorce after 25 years together.
He did not give reasons for the separation, but in a Daily Beast article at the weekend, he thanked Andrew for “standing by me through the challenges of the last decade.”
He wrote in an email to the diocese of New Hampshire: “It is at least a small comfort to me, as a gay rights and marriage equality advocate, to know that like any marriage, gay and lesbian couples are subject to the same complications and hardships that afflict marriages between heterosexual couples.”
“All of us sincerely intend, when we take out wedding vows, to live up to the ideal of ‘til death do us part. But not all of us are able to see this through until death indeed parts us.”
Gene Robinson worked in the New Hampshire Episcopal Diocese for 27 years, and prior to retiring last year, said he would have stayed on until the mandatory retirement age of 72, had he been the only openly gay bishop out of the 300 worldwide, but as he was not, he said “now I can move on to do other things.”
He went on to be a part-time senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, where he will focus on immigration, health care reform, poverty and LGBT issues.
