Robinson Opens "Clergy Call" on Capitol Hill

Bishop Gene Robinson gave the opening remarks Monday at the Human Rights Campaign's "Clergy Call," which has assembled about 300 clergy members from across the country to lobby U.S. lawmakers for LGBT rights on Capitol Hill Tuesday.

Robinson, the first openly gay bishop consecrated by the Episcopal Church, used his time to acknowledge the challenges faced by religious leaders working on behalf of LGBT equality. He shared the story of a man who had been arrested about three months ago by Vermont state police. When they searched his car, officers found Mapquest maps to Bishop Robinson's house lying beside pictures of Robinson and his partner that had been pulled off the Internet with the words "Save the church, kill the bishop" scribbled across them and lying next to his sawed-off shotgun.

"It appears he was on his way to kill us," he said. Robinson recalled that Harvey Milk used to keep threats taped to his refrigerator "as a way of sort of spitting in the eye of the devil, but in the quiet of my own home and the quiet of my own heart, this is hard."

But Robinson said the "hard and Godly work" clergy members are doing is particularly important based on the discriminatory history of religious institutions in this nation.

"The church, the synagogue, the mosque -- religion in general -- still present the greatest obstacle we face in full equality for LGBT people," he said, adding, "95% of the oppression we know in our lives comes from religious institutions."

Furthermore, within the struggle for justice on behalf of LGBT Americans, the separation of church and state has often been used by religious leaders to impede progress.

"We normally meant we don't want the state impinging upon the church or our religious institutions," Robinson said of clergy members, "but in terms of the churches fighting against marriage equality, we are actually witnessing the church impinging upon the states. We are seeing religious people trying to enforce their views and values and beliefs on a secular culture.

"We are actually the bridge between the LGBT movement and those institutions which are its greatest obstacle."

Robinson also talked about the importance of simply engaging in the work for equality and justice even if the end of oppression is not readily in sight.

"None of us will see the end of ill treatment and ill feeling against LGBT people," he said. "The point I think for us is that along the way on this journey toward LGBT equality, we get to meet God, because we always meet God when we are involved with the marginalized and the oppressed, don't we? And that is its own reward."

Robinson recalled the work of equality activists who had come before them -- drag queens at Stonewall, Harvey Milk, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. -- and said the work that clergy are doing today will pave the road for those who come after.

"We have countless people on whose shoulders we stand and it will be quite enough for us to be providing the shoulders on which future generations stand," he said.

In an interview following his opening remarks, Robinson called religious support of marriage equality "the big unreported story."

I think the media has bought into what the rest of us has, which is that the religious right speaks for Christians," he said. "One of the things I keep saying is that progressive Christians need to find their voice, and to take back the scriptures, which I think have been held hostage by the Christian right."

Though Robinson said he believed mainline Christians "have stopped hating us, they are not yet ready to celebrate us. That's the next big thing to do. We've learned with race and with gender, it's not enough just to tolerate the other."

In terms of the march that's progressing in the Northeast towards marriage equality, Robinson noted that religious institutions had been caught behind the curve.

I think religious institutions have been thrown a little bit into chaos by the forward momentum in the culture," he said. Even a group like the Episcopal Church, which Robinson called "reasonably liberal," "we've got dioceses in which marriage is legal and we don't have the liturgical forms to sacramentalize that and so on. I think religious leaders have been a little bit overtaken by these events that they thought would take much longer to come along."

Robinson was careful to note that religious institutions will have complete autonomy in deciding whether to perform same-sex marriages in states where it is legal.