Source: The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/26/national/26church.html

On February 26, 2005 The New York Times reported, "The Episcopal Church U.S.A. began to grapple yesterday with a request from the leaders of the worldwide Anglican Communion to withdraw its official representatives from a major Anglican governing body to avoid a rupture over homosexuality... Late Thursday, the primates of 35 provinces, or regions, of the communion meeting at Dromantine, a 200-year-old estate 30 miles south of Belfast, Northern Ireland, issued a communiqué addressing the rifts in the denomination that emerged after the Episcopal Church ordained an openly gay man as a bishop of New Hampshire in late 2003 and a diocese in Canada developed a liturgy for and blessed same-sex unions."