And why should we want to stay together?

NPR just told me that the National Convention of the Episcopal Church is contemplating a temporary ban on gay bishops in order to preserve the unity of the Church.

Note: I was raised Episcopal, my parents still are, I do have a dog in this fight, even if it's a scrawny one due to my current state of not exactly believing anything.

My question - and it's always been my question, and may have led to my current status as a freethinker - is simple: Why should People A, who believe in something, even want to be part of the same thing as People B, who think that People A are wrong and heinous and sinful? Especially if the only way that People A can be part of it is to renounce what they believe and pretend to think like People B? Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that why there are several hundred versions of Protestantism?

To get specific, if you think that women are just as likely to be called by God to be priests, why would you want to belong to a Church that teaches the exact opposite of that? Likewise, if you believe that gays can be elected bishops - which obviously means you believe gays can be called by God to be priests - why would you want to be part of a Church which teaches the opposite?

Especially if you've already elected a gay man to be your bishop. What happens to Bishop Robinson and those who elected him if this ban is put into place? What happens to the other gay people in the church - what is this lesson? That being part of a bigoted organization is so important that you must deny what God has told you is the truth? Or that well, we all made a mistake and he's not really a bishop? Or what, exactly?

Anyway, I've never understood why the least progressive, most reactionary, most intolerant in a Church should be the ones who everyone else caters to - out of some need for "unity".

I don't want to be in "union" with people like that.

Ecumenism is all well and good, but if it's carried to its logical end - the end the RC Church demands - the only way there'll be any world-wide church is if we all go back to RC teachings and forget everything we've learned since then.