Robinson, now retired, said he is breathless about how quickly... (Associated Press) 
 
 The vote came in Salt Lake City at the Episcopal General Convention, just days after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized gay marriage nationwide.  SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Episcopalians overwhelmingly voted Wednesday to allow religious weddings for same-sex couples, solidifying the church's embrace of gay rights that began more than a decade ago with the pioneering election of the first openly gay bishop. In resolutions adopted here at the denomination’s General Convention meeting in Salt Lake City this week, the bishops have endorsed new liturgies or services for same-sex couples wishing to marry in church. The bishops also approved changing the church’s canons, or rules, governing marriage, making them gender neutral by substituting the terms “man and woman” with “couple.” However, clergy were also given the right to refuse to perform a same-sex marriage, with the promise they would incur no penalty, while bishops were given the right to refuse to allow the services to take place in their diocese. On Tuesday, the leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion that includes the Episcopal Church, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, released a statement expressing his “deep concern” over the votes and urged the bishops to pull back, writing that the “decision will cause distress for some and have ramifications for the Anglican Communion as a whole, as well as for its ecumenical and interfaith relationships.” 
 
 The church’s compromise has sparked the ire of Episcopalians who are both for and against same-sex marriage. However, no clergy could be compelled to perform a same-sex marriage, and a bishop had the authority to forbid his clergy from celebrating gay marriages. Many dioceses in the New York-based church of nearly 1.9 million members have allowed their priests to perform civil same-sex weddings, using a trial prayer service to bless the couple. Bishop William Love of Albany rose and addressed the convention and cited the biblical passage Matthew 19:5, where Jesus states that at marriage “a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” 
 
 “If our Lord is the son of God … God incarnate. The Episcopal Church voted in 1976 that gays and lesbians were "a full and equal claim with all other persons upon the love, acceptance, and pastoral concern and care of the (c)hurch." The use of the liturgies would be subject to the permission of a diocese's bishop, said the Rev. The Episcopal Church is the U.S. wing of the Anglican Communion, an 80 million-member global fellowship of churches.
– The leaders of the Episcopal Church have approved same-sex marriage by a more resounding margin than the Supreme Court did last week: The church's House of Deputies voted 173-27 in favor of new rules and rituals that will allow same-sex couples to be married in church, the AP reports. The House of Bishops backed the changes 129-26 on Tuesday. The church, which is the American member of the Anglican Communion, was seen as a trailblazer when it elected an openly gay bishop in 2003 and is now the third major Protestant group to allow gay marriage in all congregations, after the United Church of Christ and the Presbyterian Church, which voted to redefine marriage earlier this year, the AP notes. It took a week of debate at the church's General Convention to bring in the changes, which include ditching terms like "wife" and "husband" for gender-neutral language, the Deseret News reports. The final product of the negotiations was a compromise that allows clergy to refuse to perform same-sex wedding ceremonies, which means that although such ceremonies may begin in some areas this fall, they are unlikely to be held in more conservative dioceses, Episcopal priest George Conger explains at the Washington Post. "What the bishops did agree on was to hold conflicting stances in tension and allow each side to honor their consciences," he writes.