Only weeks after the Episcopal Church ended a de facto moratorium on promoting gay men and lesbians into the church hierarchy, church leaders in Los Angeles nominated two openly gay priests as assistant bishops on Sunday. The move came a day after a church search committee in Minnesota announced that it had settled on three candidates, one of them a lesbian, for bishop. The decisions are certain to rekindle the hostilities between the liberal and conservatives factions within the Episcopal Church in the United States and between the church and the Anglican Communion, the generally conservative global network of churches to which the Episcopal Church belongs. The moratorium on ordaining gays and lesbians into the church hierarchy was adopted three years ago and helped calm conservatives in the Anglican Communion, which was nearly torn apart by the election in 2003 of the church’s first and only openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire. But church members voted overwhelmingly on July 14 at a general convention in Anaheim, Calif., to reopen the door to bishops who are openly gay. The Diocese of Los Angeles, one of the largest and most liberal […]