ATLANTA, April 6 (UPI) -- Outmoded Western religious beliefs are the biggest obstacle to gay and lesbian civil rights, New Hampshire Episcopal Bishop V. Gene Robinson said

Robinson's 2003 consecration as the first openly gay bishop in a mainline Christian denomination set off a rift in his church's parent body, the Anglican Communion

Let's be honest, most of the discrimination ... has come at the hands of religious people, and the greatest single hindrance to the achievement of full civil rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people can be laid at the doorstep of the three Abrahamic faiths: Christianity, Judaism and Islam," Robinson said in Atlanta at Emory University's Center for the Study of Law and Religion

ustifying anti-homosexuality laws with presumed moral authority from the Bible's Book of Leviticus -- which says a man "shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination" punishable by death -- ignores that life has changed since 400 B.C., Robinson said