(Those of you that read sage_and_sea will recognize this as an expansion on a comment I made to an entry of hers earlier today, but I'm posting it here so I can refer to it later.)

Yesterday, I heard a visiting fellow in religion at Princeton talk about the potential Episcopalian schism over gay marriage on NPR's All Things Considered. He said something that really resonated with me: by making such a big deal about gay marriage with the argument that the Bible condemns homosexuality, it's making the statement that the few mentions of it in the Bible are more important than the far greater number of mentions of other issues like idolatry and adultery. That is a far more dramatic statement than the great schism between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches nearly a millenia ago.

(If you want to listen to that commentary piece, go to All Things Considered for Friday, August 1, 2003 and scroll down to the segment title "Commentary: A Schism in the Episcopal Church?".)