The Bishop of Gippsland of the Anglican Church of Australia has died following a brief illness. The Rt. Rev. John McIntyre died on 6 June 2014 at Monash Hospital in Clayton of a respiratory infection. He was 62. Ordained the 11th Bishop of Gippsland in February 2006, Bishop McIntyre gained an international reputation within Anglican circles as an outspoken maverick, calling for a coal mining ban in Australia due to its safety and environmental hazards as well as his support for changing the church’s teachings on homosexuality. In 2012 the bishop said he would not conform to the Australian House of Bishops protocol banning the licencing or ordination of gay clergy, arguing that science had shown the Bible’s prohibitions against homosexuality to be wrong-headed. At the 2014 House of Bishop’s meeting Bishop McIntyre’s motion to change church discipline on gay clergy was rejected and a new protocol introduced that reaffirmed the church’s traditional teachings on sexual conduct of the clergy.
