Is God Sanctioning Discrimination?

By Susan Campbell

When is it OK to discriminate?

When God tells you to.

Earlier this year, a Connecticut high school student — a popular and respected scholar-athlete —- was forced to leave a parochial school in West Simsbury when administrators discovered that the student is a lesbian. An online protest group collected more than 20,000 signatures. The student remained unwelcome, and she enrolled at Watkinson School, where administrators say they're delighted to have such an engaged young woman.

In the mid-2000s, an Episcopal church in Groton joined with the so-called Connecticut Six, a group of priests and some members of their congregations who — bereft at their church's progressive stance —- filed a federal lawsuit. The Episcopal Church, they said, had become too liberal for their tastes, as evidenced by the 2003 ordination of a divorced gay man as bishop in New Hampshire. A judge dismissed the case, and one of the Six, Bishop Seabury Church of Groton, left the Episcopal Church to join the Convocation of Anglicans in North America. They also refused to relinguish their building.

Read more at The Hartford Courant...