EXCLUSIVE: Out Bishop Gene Robinson To Officiate Cynthia “It’s A Choice” Nixon’s Gay Wedding

While at Sundance this week, Queerty talked with Bishop Gene Robinson, the openly gay clergyman profiled in the new documentary Love Free Or Die. The Episcopalian minister tells us he’ll be performing the marriage ceremony for Cynthia Nixon and her partner, Christine Marinoni, this May.

“I’ve been invited by Cynthia and her partner to officiate at their ceremony over Memorial Day weekend,” said Robinson. “It’s going to be my great pleasure to be there and to be a part of that celebration.”

Nixon’s controversial remarks about choosing to be gay have put her in the spotlight, so we asked Robinson for his take.  “Well, I’ve never used that argument or said ‘We didn’t choose to be this way,'” he said diplomatically. “Because, let’s say if they find out there is no genetics involved? Why should it matter, really, whether we choose it or not?”

Still, Robinson is not all that comfortable with Nixon’s very public stance: “I think we go down a terrible road when we pin all of our arguments on the choice issue,” he explained. “One of the freedoms God gives us is the freedom to love whom we will, and then to love that person with all that we have. I think choice has very little to do with it.”

Before he came out, Robinson himself was married to a woman for 13 years—but admits he was actively denying a part of his personality. “I determined  I couldn’t suppress who I really was for very much longer,” he told us. “And I wouldn’t call myself bisexual, because I know that if something happened to my partner—and now husband—of 24 years, I wouldn’t be just open to both genders the way bisexual people are.”

Stay tuned our full interview with Robinson, in which he calls intolerant denominations “increasingly irrelevant” and discusses his ongoing battle with the American Episcopalian Church.

Photos via Nick Step, Julissa Llosa

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