Gene Robinson on the Bible, Homosexuality

The Right Reverend V. Gene Robinson, who will retire in 2013 after making history as the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church, has some fighting words for religious conservatives who quote Bible verse to justify disapproval of gays and lesbians.

"We cannot ... isolate these passages about homosexual acts and impute to them the kind of enduring authority which we ascribe to nothing before or after," Robinson writes of Old Testament prohibitions against homosexuality in a guest post for The Washington Post's religion blog, On Faith.

"One has to wonder why the biblical literalists who cite this passage against homosexuality don't seem to go all the way and advocate for death as the punishment for homosexual behavior! We cannot have it both ways," Robinson writes.

Read the full post here.