Protests by bikers usually take the form of fleets of motorcyles blocking motorways over rising petrol prices. So the heckling of the openly gay Anglican bishop Gene Robinson by a lone biker during a sermon at a church in Putney, south London, has raised a few eyebrows.
The heckler, who was escorted from the service, is described by by Jim Naughton on Episcopal Cafe as "a broad-chested man with shoulder-length brown hair", wearing "a black Triumph T-shirt and black leather pants".
After waving his motorcycle helmet at Robinson, he stood outside "for several minutes near his bike, pulled on his black leather jacket and matching gloves, and departed".
Naughton says a journalist asked the church's vicar whether he had "pulled the man off of the street and paid him to disrupt the service in order to create as unfavourable an image as possible of Robinson's adversaries".
This cynical view is shared by the rightwing blog Blaney's Blarney, which wonders "whether the biker who heckled 'Bishop' Robinson might have been a plant, a paid heckler who was tasked with heckling on cue" in order to raise sympathy for the American clergyman.
Taking a different tack, Keith Hitchman, a pastor in Cheltenham, says what was interesting about the heckler was his age and scruffy appearance. He writes: "The clergy and congregation, on the other hand, were virtually all over 45 and greying (just like me). What does that say about where the church is really at?"
