I demur with Sojourner that in the case of female priests and bishops that reason trumped scripture. At least officially, the church does not say that reason can trump scripture or tradition. Rather, Anglicans don't assume that tradition is 100% correct. They assume rather that the church's discernment of God is both incomplete and can be, at times, in error. So you'll find in the Anglican tradition a series of hard looks backward as they wrestle with the meaning of the gospel in the contemporary generation. Thus we have revisited such things as the role of dead saints in the "communion of saints", the nature of the Eucharist, the appropriacy of women in the episcopate, and, now, how homosexuality fits in our understanding of ethics and the life of the church. Ought we to regard it as "sinful" in some sense, what would that mean in light of what we think we know about it from contemporary science, or ought we to acknowledge it as part of God's specific design for certain persons, and thus not let homosexual basis stand as a barrier to fellowship in the church.
Overall, I think this is a helpful perspective for the Christian community, to always be open to revision in light of the fact that we might have got it wrong. It certainly causes instability at times -- witness the fragmentation of the ECUSA and the Anglican Church of Canada, both of which are risking excommunication from the broader Church of England for their policies. But on the whole, the church is well served by being open to critical second looks at previous decisions.
