Breaking news

I hate to link to breaking news here, because inevitably something pops up almost immediately to take the story beyond whatever analysis I can give it.

Still, the 11th-hour accusations against the Rev. V. Gene Robinson, Episcopal bishop-elect of New Hampshire, are disturbing on a number of levels.

First off, there’s the disturbance of the substance of the allegations, if true. It would be more than a bit scandalous, and it would, because of the controversial nature of Robinson’s election, have inevitable, if unfair, ramifications beyond just himself.

But just as disturbing — and discrediting — is how and when these two accusations came out: after the House of Deputies had approved the election by a surprisingly wide margin, and just before the House of Bishops was about to take up the vote. The timing is, to say the least, a bit suspect.

The church is investigating the allegations. The big question is whether a reasonable investigation can be held before the convention wraps up on Friday, or, if not, whether there is some mechanism that would allow Robinson’s election to be confirmed (or at least voted upon) afterwards.

Every indication is that Robinson underwent extensive background checks prior to his election in New Hampshire in June (if they are anything like what we did here in Colorado, that would be multiple levels of such checks). The election was a sixteen month, very public process, as has been the time between it and the ECUSA convention in Minneapolis. All the debate over Robinson himself, and the idea of an openly gay bishop, has been impossible to avoid.

So why is it that something like this comes out only at the very last second?

A claim that Robinson inappropriately touched a man was e-mailed Sunday to Bishop Thomas Ely of Vermont, who was asked in the message not to consent to Robinson’s election. Other bishops received the e-mail as well and “some of the bishops have talked to the accuser” about his claims, Solheim said.
In the message, a man who identified himself as David Lewis from Manchester, Vt., said Robinson “does not maintain appropriate boundaries with men.” Lewis wrote in the e-mail that he met Robinson at a church event “a couple of years ago” and “he put his hands on me inappropriately every time I engaged him in conversation.” Lewis described himself as a “straight man reporting homosexual harassment.”

Lewis has a couple of good character references in the AP story, but you still have to wonder where he’s been this whole time. Was it only when Robinson’s election was seen as inevitable that Lewis felt he had to come forward? Does Lewis’ apparent status as being in training to become an Episcopal priest play into this?

That allegation is the more serious of the two, though barring anyone else coming forward, it remains the sort of he-said/he-said claim that cannot be resolved one way or another. More of a tempest-in-a-teapot, to my mind (which makes its 11th-hour revelation even more suspect) has to do with a web site.

Theuner said in a statement that the church’s investigation would also include scrutiny of separate concerns raised about Robinson’s “relationship to a Web site of outright.org,” a secular outreach program for gay and bisexual youth that Robinson helped found.
Bishops learned of the porn link claim from David Virtue, a conservative Anglican activist and writer who has been among the harshest critics of Robinson and of Episcopal gay activists. Virtue said a bishop whom he would not identify alerted him to the link.
Mo Baxley, a member of Concord, N.H., Outright’s board of directors, said Robinson hasn’t been involved with the group for several years and had no role in developing its Web page.
The link is on an unaffiliated site that had resources for gay youth, Baxley said. That page provided resources for bisexuals that, a few links away, provided access to porn.
Outright issued a statement Monday saying the organization was not aware of the link and objected to it.

And, according to an NPR story yesterday, that link has been removed from the Outright site.

I almost guarantee (without checking) that you could probably find in my linklist a site that “a few links away, provides access to porn.” I mean, something three (or more) links away is nearly meaningless. It’s like the shocking discovery that my friend’s neighbor’s sister is a drug dealer — it’s nothing that would properly bring scandal upon my life — especially if it was a friend who I hadn’t really talked to for “several years.”

Again, this whole thing, to me, smacks of a last-moment attempt at character assassination by folks who, presumably, feel that any means is fair to prevent a spiritual wrong from occuring. Which philosophy, I suspect, their Savior would not agree with.

We’ll see.