WATERVILLE – Election Day was bittersweet for V. Gene Robinson.

He celebrated the first anniversary of his consecration as bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire and as the first openly homosexual bishop in the world.

On the other hand, it was also the day he learned that voters in 11 states had passed constitutional amendments to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, effectively banning gay marriage.

Robinson, 57, mixed religion and politics in equal measure when he spoke on Thursday at Colby College in Waterville. His lecture, “The Politics of Polarization and the Search for Community,” was sponsored by the Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs and Civic Engagement.

“I, for one, am thankful that heterosexual marriage is now protected,” he said sardonically. “I have never met a person whose marriage would be undermined by the love that I have for my partner.”

More than 200 students and members of the faculty, staff and community crowded into Lorimar Chapel. It was a supportive audience, even though Michael Heath, executive director of the Christian Civic League of Maine, was in the audience. He asked no questions of Robinson, but Friday posted his reaction to the speech on the league’s Web site.

“So what’s wrong with America right now?” Robinson asked rhetorically. “I think it’s arrogance and hegemony and a simplistic and moralistic view of the world. There’s a lot in Scripture about arrogance. It seemed to be the thing that made Jesus the angriest of all.”

The bishop said that the people Jesus cared for the most were the poor and those who lived on the margins of society. Robinson said that from its disregard for the AIDS crisis in Africa to its unwillingness to forgive international debt to the war in Iraq, the Bush administration is not following the example of the Good Samaritan.

“If we want peace and security, it will not come from Star Wars technology and smart bombs,” he said. “It will only come from justice. So, I think the recipe is pretty simple and so hard to do, which is mutual respect for one another and radical hospitality for the world. It is time for us to be prophetic and to call the world to a new vision of community.”

Robinson was consecrated the ninth Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire on Nov. 2, 2003. He was elected bishop in July 2003 and confirmed by a national convention a month later. Robinson has lived openly with a man for almost 15 years. He is the first openly gay bishop in the Anglican Communion, which includes 70 million members worldwide and about 2.3 million Episcopalians in the United States.

Robinson was optimistic on Thursday in assessing how his denomination is coping with the threat of a schism over his consecration. In mid-October, an Anglican Communion document known as the Windsor Report stopped short of calling for Robinson’s removal but asked that the Episcopal Church “express its regret” that it harmed the worldwide body.

“The Windsor Report asks something of everyone,” Robinson said after the lecture on Thursday. “It calls us all to stay at the table.”

While a majority of people who attended Robinson’s lecture agreed with his politics and supported his election as bishop, Heath was not among them.

“It is not time for reconciliation,” wrote Heath in his reaction to Robinson’s lecture posted Friday on the league Web site. “Either the bishop’s radical redefinition of family and marriage is going to prevail, or the truth about marriage and the family is going to prevail. Period. That’s it. That is the bottom line.

“Somebody was worshipped in the Colby chapel last night alright,” he concluded in his posting. “And it wasn’t God, truth or reason.”

Tim Rector of Waterville said after Robinson’s lecture that the bishop touched on many of the ideas he has discussed recently.

A cradle Episcopalian, Rector attends St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Waterville. The controversy surrounding Robinson’s election has spurred lively discussion in his family and parish, he said Thursday.

“He echoed things that I’ve been talking about with people at work, with friends, neighbors and relatives,” Rector said

The event also drew clergy from other denominations.