Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has written a column about her trip to Egypt for the meeting of Anglican primates from around the world.

The veiling of Egpytian women, along with the primates’ discussion about sexuality, led her to think about gender roles in the U.S. and abroad.

Jefferts Schori says: “The most intriguing conversation I had in Alexandria was with a primate who asked how same-sex couples partition `roles.’ He literally asked if one was identified as the wife and one as the husband, and then wanted to know which one promised to obey the other in the marriage ceremony. Several of us explained that marriage in the West is most often understood as a partnership of equals, and has been for some time.”

And while women in Egypt are more or less covered, hiding hair, face, and sometimes body from view, the primates’ meeting took place in a hotel conference room “bedecked with several large paintings of half-naked women.”

“I found it striking that public expectations of women are modest dress and covering, yet there is evidently a rather different attitude toward men’s entertainment,” Jefferts Schori writes. The presiding bishop –who is only female primate in Anglican history–also sat through a worship service in which the two Bible readings told women to be silent in church (1 Corinthians 14) and Salome asks for the head of John the Baptist.

Attitudes toward gender in countries like Egypt are part of the reason they clash with progressive Western notions of homosexuality, according to the presiding bishop.

“The greatest difficulty in many cultures, including parts of North American society, is the perception that one of the partners in such a union must be acting like a woman — and that is most definitely not a socially desirable status! It is an attitude directly involved in the handful of scriptural references to male homosexuality in the Hebrew Bible. The New Testament references have more to do with abusive and exploitative behavior.”

Finally, in Fort Worth, Texas, a man asks Jefferts Schori “All of this is really about male supremacy, isn’t it?”

Her answer: “His words, not mine, but worth consideration.”