Gay Bishop Under FBI Guard After Death Threats

(Manchester, New Hampshire) The first openly gay man to become an Episcopal bishop is under round the clock FBI protection following threats on his life, according to media reports.

Gene Robinson is to be formally installed as Bishop of New Hampshire on Sunday.

"The only thing that will stop this happening is if I am not around any more," Canon Gene Robinson, who is to become the Episcopalian Bishop of New Hampshire, told the British newspaper The Independent in an interview published today. "We have to take that seriously."

A spokesperson for the bishop-elect declined comment on the FBI protection. But several British papers Monday reported that the threats had come from conservative extremists.

Security concerns were one of the reasons Canon Robinson cancelled plans to attend a gay Christian conference in England over the weekend, the Independent reports. Robinson addressed the conference via satellite from the United States.

During his speech he acknowledged that he had received a large amount of hate mail. "I am receiving lots of angry hate mail but also love letters of incredible passion and depth," he said.

The threats are being taken seriously in America because of the growing militancy of religious extremists.

Nine years ago Paul Hill, a former preacher and an anti-abortionist, shot dead a doctor and his bodyguard outside a clinic in Florida. Hill was executed for the crime last month.

Meanwhile, an Episcopal priest who wrote an article sympathetic to Robinson's election has been forced to resign from a private religious school in Georgia.

John Merchant quit after refusing a demand from administrators at Darlington School in Rome, Georgia to apologize to dozens of people upset with his views.

Merchant, 57, became chaplain at Darlington School, a nondenominational preparatory school, during the summer.

In a column for the student newspaper about the Episcopalian church's confirmation of Robinson as Episcopal bishop in New Hampshire Merchant wrote that God is more concerned with spirituality than sexual orientation.

After the column appeared, school president David Hicks and headmaster David Rhodes told Merchant that some school donors were considering withdrawing their support at the academy. They asked him to initiate between 50 and 75 one-one-one meetings over a month to apologize to individuals upset with the article.

"I didn't have to ponder where I stood," Merchant told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution for a story in Monday's editions. "But I took time to keep it brief and try to explain my beliefs. I was trying to convey it in a positive way."

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