“I always wanted to be a June bride.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew there'd be trouble. I'd just delivered an hour-long lecture on the relationship between religion and public discourse, and why religious fervour over homosexuality plays such a large and negative role in the securing of full civil rights for gay people.

During the question-and-answer period, someone asked me about the forthcoming civil union between me and Mark, my partner of 20 years. The audience had been welcoming and sympathetic, full of laughter and understanding, and for one moment, I forgot that the C-SPAN cameras were rolling and that every word I said would be parsed by my critics. Within hours, those eight words had made it around the world, thanks to conservative bloggers and the magic of the internet.

No context; nothing about the preceding hour of carefully constructed comments; nothing about my defence of - and love for - the Scriptures; nothing about the loving God to whom I constantly pointed. Just this one sentence.

Surely no one thinks that I'll don a wedding gown and wear flowers in my hair. But I suspect that a lot of people are uncomfortable with me using the word “bride” - a word associated with women as property - to describe a man. For many centuries marriage was about the transfer of property (the bride) from one man (the father) to another man (the groom), in some places accompanied by the payment of a dowry or bride price. Is calling myself a “bride” offensive because it relegates a “privileged” man to the status of a woman? I'll be the first to admit that it would have been better if I'd never uttered those eight words - not because they aren't true, but simply because they gave the conservative forces something else to use against me. It was a stupid thing to say, and I should have known better.

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Background

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Background

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What I should have said was something like this: “Gay and lesbian people grow up with the same hopes that other people do - that they'll be able to celebrate their love for one another with family and friends gathered around, pledging their support for the faithful, monogamous, lifelong-intentioned, holy vows they've just taken. I, too, have always longed for such a day.”

The worst part is that it's reminiscent of the years and years that I had to self-censor everything I said, so as not to give away the fact that I was gay. Gay and lesbian people learn at an early age to filter every single word before uttering it, straining out anything that might indicate who we really are on the inside. I know from my own experience, and from that of countless others, that this is an exercise in self-alienation. In a nanosecond we listen in our heads to what we're about to say and, before speaking, edit out anything that might indicate to the listener that we're gay. We get really, really good at it, until it becomes second nature. But it takes a toll on our souls.

This may not sound like oppression - it's not the same as being thrown into prison or burnt at the stake - but it's one of the silent, painful results of oppression. The result of any oppression is living in fear - fear of discovery, rejection and retribution. It's what most gay and lesbian people live with every day, all over the world.

A fellow bishop, responding to my “June bride” comment, recently questioned the appropriateness of my having a civil union just before the once-a-decade Lambeth Conference of the bishops of the Anglican Communion. He suggested that to spare the communion further distress, Mark and I should cancel our plans.

Why a civil union? Why take advantage of the new civil law permitting such a social arrangement, provided for by the state of New Hampshire to support the stability and societal good that comes from having committed, faithful gay families in the state?

Mark and I have been together for 20 years. In much the same way that women have done for countless generations, Mark left a great career with the Peace Corps to make a life with me and my daughters in New Hampshire. I'd made it clear right from the beginning that I'd never leave them. For all that time, we've shared our lives in every aspect. Although a fiercely private person, Mark wholeheartedly supported me in responding to God's call to the episcopate, and when my election took place, and ever since, he's stood by my side - in the uncomfortable limelight - as my partner and spouse.

We've dealt with all the ramifications of being a gay couple in our culture. All the protections that exist for heterosexual couples were not automatically available to us. At considerable cost, we legally contracted some of these: durable power of attorney for financial and medical decisions, inheritance (of course, an inheritance tax would be imposed on him as if he and I were complete strangers), a trust for him and our children. But literally hundreds of rights and protections afforded heterosexual couples at the utterance of “I do” are not available to us. The kind of protections that became instantly available to Britney Spears - who, on a lark, decided one night in Las Vegas to get married - are not available to Mark and me despite 20 years of love and fidelity.

Now that some - though not even half - of these rights and protections have been afforded by an act of the New Hampshire legislature, why would we not take advantage of them? If loving one's spouse should come at the top of the list of one's priorities and commitments, how or why would I say to Mark: “We really shouldn't do this because some people in the Anglican Communion will be upset”? Our union will not be marriage, with the more than one thousand federal and state rights that instantly accrue to a traditional married couple. But it will offer us something. Does Mark not deserve - do we not deserve - the protections now available to us?

Now I am being accused of intentionally poking a finger in Lambeth's eye by scheduling the service in June. But if we'd waited until after Lambeth to announce our intentions, I'd be just as severely criticised for having been disingenuous and secretive about the civil union to assure an invitation to Lambeth. There is no time when our civil union will be acceptable to many in the Anglican Communion. But I will not be irresponsible to the partner and love of my life just to avoid giving offence.

Why not just a civil ceremony? Why a blessing, too? When I testified before legislative committees for legal civil unions in New Hampshire I argued for separating the civil right of unions from the religious rite of blessing. Mark and I will solemnise our union in a building owned by the state, signifying the civil authority for this union, then proceed across the street to St Paul's church, where we will give thanks for our union and ask God's - and the gathered community's - blessing on us. We contemplated participating in a simple Eucharist, without any words of blessing, out of deference to the Anglican Communion. But does anyone think that the headlines would have read “Gay bishop carefully steers clear of offending communion”? And because the blessing of unions has gone on in the Diocese of New Hampshire since 1996 (seven years before my election), why should the bishop not be entitled to the same pastoral care offered to other people in the diocese?

But why not just make it a “private” service - a solution offered by some in the Anglican Communion? But “private blessing” is an oxymoron. Although our service will be by invitation only, and out of sight of the press, our understanding of marriage is that the couple make their vows public, in the presence of the gathered community, seeking the community's prayers and assistance in being faithful to those vows.

To relegate the blessing of a marriage to a private, secretive venue is to violate its very nature. When I was growing up I could never have imagined same-sex couples being “out”, never mind being married or partners in a civil union. There were no role models for a happy, productive life as a gay or lesbian person - no Billie Jean King or Greg Louganis, no Ellen DeGeneres, no Ambassador James Hormel, no Congressman Barney Frank. We had not yet been told that Walt Whitman, Tennessee Williams and W.H. Auden were all gay; nor did we know that it was a renowned pacifist, Bayard Rustin, who happened to be gay, who taught Martin Luther King Jr about non-violent resistance. My life might have been very different had I known these things.

Our civil union will no doubt be reported by the press. I can't stop that. But I can rejoice that somewhere in Idaho or Ontario or Sussex there's a gay boy or a lesbian girl who will read about it and know that they, too, can aspire to a healthy, whole life with a person of the same sex - and that they don't have to give up their faith along the way. It might occur to them that they, too, can put their sexuality and their spirituality together in a way that makes for happiness and spiritual depth. Like me, they may have “always dreamt of being a June bride”. But unlike me, they will know it is possible.

In the Eye of the Storm, by Gene Robinson, £12.99, Canterbury Press. Available from Times BooksFirst for £11.69, free p&p, 0870 1608080, timesonline.co.uk/ booksfirst