From David Mills' (a former Episcopalian, now a Roman Catholic) mere comments over at Touchstone:
You may have noticed that everything these men say against approving homosexual living could be said against approving the ordination of women, which all these men approve, I think rather enthusiastically (I know almost all of them). They all appeal to a tradition they themselves do not obey. They appeal to a unity they themselves helped shatter. They appeal to a way of reading Scripture they have already disregarded.
Mr. Wetzel even asserts the requirement that the bishop be the husband of one wife, and therefor not the husband of one husband, without noticing that husbands are male. (I don't think his organization has ever protested the ordination of anyone with two or more spouses living, though his use of St. Paul's rule leads one to think they object to it as strongly as they do to the ordination of a homosexual man.)
Anyway, one does raise one's eyebrows to hear men who believe in ordaining women speak out against the violation of 2000 years of tradition and call such an innovation hubris, and declare that "nowhere is the Holy Spirit seen in the New Testament to contradict God's revelation in prior ages" while advancing an apparent contradiction. They helped push a boulder over the edge of the cliff and are now angry that it did not stop rolling halfway down the hill, and though they didn't mind it smashing the homes of people who lived near the top, are upset that it's now smashing into their homes.
They would argue that the two cases are different, and that there are biblical arguments to be made for ordaining women as well as men, arguments we have only in the last thirty or forty years seen and understood. But then that is exactly what Canon Robinson's supporters say. And with as much reason. The conservatives don't have any reason, beyond a belief in their own exegesis, to say that their innovation is Godly and the homosexualists' ungodly. They cannot appeal to tradition as the authority for their reading of Scripture now, when they disregarded it then.
When faced with the election of Canon Robinson, the approval of which (certain to come) will be the Episcopal Church's official approval of homosexual coupling, their approval of the first innovation leaves them, as I said, like a man trying to throw punches while sinking in quicksand.
Posted by Clifton at June 18, 2003 11:50 AM