Georgia

It seems pretty apparent why
It seems pretty apparent why she would choose to keep her marriage secret—many churches do not accept same-gender marriages, and their reactions can be quite awful. No one wants to be told that their adult, consensual marriage to the person that they love is invalid, or bad, or shameful, because some people think, based on a handful of Bible verses that have multiple interpretations, that all non-hetero-normative activity is “bad”. She probably faced quite a bit of unpleasantness when she came out. Interracial couples throughout history have faced the same problem, and yes, many Christians used the Bible to shame these marriages too. This does not mean that any secret interracial marriages that took place before the 1960’s were conducted out of shame. However, it is easy to imagine that couples in these situations would keep their marriages secret out of fear of the reactions of others—the fact that this Bishop had to leave her church speaks volumes about the validity of her fears.
As for the Bible verses that many people reference when shaming homosexuality, or non-hetero-“normativity”, more and more scholars are suspecting that the Leviticus verses are part of something called “The Holiness Code”, which is a doctrine of purity intended to separate the Israelites from their surrounding Gentiles. At the time in which Leviticus was written, the Israelites had adopted some rather distasteful rituals of the religions around them, some of which involved child sacrifice and cult prostitution, acts meant to appeal to these religions’ fertility gods. Many of the prostitutes involved were young men. The term for these young male prostitutes is “qadeshim”, or “holy ones”, but often this term is mistranslated to the blanket phrase “sodomite”, based solely on the sexual acts performed. This makes it sound like Leviticus bans all homosexuality, or at least same-gender love between men, as condemnations against gay women are strangely absent. Leviticus forbids the Israelites from engaging in activities that these fertility cults demanded, and imposes other strictures on them as well, in an effort to make the Israelites “more pure” than their neighbors.
Sidenote: the reprehensible behavior depicted in Sodom and Gomorrah is not condemned for the inhabitants’ homosexuality per se, but rather, the rape of guests (the city-dwellers banging outside Lot’s door aren’t asking to have a relationship with the angel guests, they are saying “bring them outside so that we can rape them”, and Lot’s response of offering his daughters in exchange is no less awful, by the way). Hospitality was an extremely important tenet of Israelite culture, and the rape of guests, particularly esteemed male guests, would be considered an abomination.
So some of the other laws in Leviticus, such as “don’t lie with your daughter” and “don’t lie with beasts”, are not only good codes of behavior, but they are also common-sense. It is understandable that God would set these laws forth, or at least as understandable as our brains can comprehend when it comes to God. Pedophilia and bestiality involve a party that cannot give consent, and incest produces genetic anomalies. And you should not cheat on your spouse, nor should you cheat with someone else’s spouse. Of course we should uphold these moral standards.

But many of the other laws listed in Leviticus are things that no longer apply to us—we no longer keep slaves (even though the Old Testament clearly considers slavery acceptable as long as they’re not your kin or countrymen), most of us are going to wear some kind of cotton-poly blend at some point, and we don’t stone people to death for blaspheming or talking back to their parents. These are laws that are supposedly considered acceptable by God. But the simple fact is that these last few laws, and the other non-common-sense laws listed in Leviticus, no longer apply.
You can counter with the verses in Hebrews in which Jesus states that the old covenant is obsolete, vanishing away in lieu of the new, so that’s why it’s okay for farmers to plant multiple crops in the same field, and for people to pierce their ears, and for men to ditch their beards. And that’s true. If you believe in Jesus, then you believe that the new covenant was ratified with his sacrifice. This means that many of the old laws set down before no longer apply, so if you want to take a trip to Red Lobster, that’s awesome, just be sure to ask for extra cheddar biscuits because they are amazing and proof of God’s existence, in my humble opinion.
Now, you can accuse Christians who accept homosexuality and bisexuality as cherry-picking the parts of the Bible that they want to believe, but the fact is, we all do it. We all cherry-pick. We all choose the parts of the Bible that we do and do not want to follow. All of us, every single one. Otherwise, we would still keep slaves, we would be forbidden from doing anything on the Sabbath, and it would be okay for a man to rape a non-kin woman as long as he took her as his wife afterward or paid her father a handsome fee. These are all regulations and rules laid out in the Old Testament, supposedly by God. You have referenced God several times in your post—well, these are the things that the Bible tells us God originally supported. Is that a world you want to live in, are these rules you want to abide by?
So how do we choose, based on Jesus’ declarations of the New Convenant, amidst some laws that do make sense and others that clearly don’t, which we should and should not follow? We have to use common sense. And while other Old Testament laws do involve common sense rules, rules that most people will probably agree are good (re: no incest, no pedophilia, no bestiality), you actually have to stop and think about homosexuality and bisexuality before you declare that out of all the laws and regulations we have discarded from the Old Testament, homosexuality is still a big ol’ sin. Why do you believe that it is a sin, aside from a handful of Bible verses that you believe say so? Because the fact is, it’s never really explored. So this is where common sense comes in.
What is bad about homosexuality? Incest, bestiality, pedophilia, these all involve a victim, just like rape, theft, and murder. Who is the victim in a homosexual relationship between two consenting adults? I guess you could argue both, somehow, but then, who is the perpetrator? You have two people, two non-related, adult people who want to be in a relationship together, so they are together. How are either of them a victim or perpetrator? Or maybe you say their relationship is bad because their sex cannot product offspring. I guess that means that infertile couples are bad too, or older couples. Or maybe you say homosexuality and bisexuality are bad because it makes you feel kind of icky to think about it, and you’re going to translate that as a “gut instinct”, or even “a message from God”. But your discomfort, your ickiness, and your personal beliefs are not okay tools by which to judge or govern others. So all you have left to point at are a couple of verses scattered in the Bible, and out of all of the stuff in the Old Testament that we have discarded from our lifestyles, you have decided—yes, you have decided—that homosexuality is bad. Well, that’s your choice. That doesn’t mean it’s okay for you to inflict your choice, or your judgment, on others.
So, that’s probably why this Bishop felt it was necessary for her to hide her marriage—because although she, and others, have gone through a complex journey to determine what is right and wrong using a combination of scripture and common sense, she knew that there would be many, many people who used specious reasoning, or no reasoning at all, to heap hate on her and her wife, because they choose to believe that homosexuality is bad. Some people say homosexuality is a choice—the fact is that believing that homosexuality is bad is a choice.