It isn’t often I revisit a topic, but in the case of Bishop V. Gene Robinson, the spirit has moved me to make an exception.

A few months ago, after Episcopalian leaders voted to confirm him as bishop of the New Hampshire diocese and Anglicans responded with a worldwide hissy fit, I wrote of the extraordinary impact this one gay man was having.

He’s still having it. Shortly after the bishop’s recent consecration, two churches in New Hampshire requested to be supervised by another diocese, and the conservative Albany, N.Y., diocese volunteered.

This seems a bit like two Red Sox players demanding to be guided by the Yankee manager. Actually, that would be real heresy.

I have some insight to offer on this whole matter.

It’s not that I’m an Episcopalian. As it happens, I was baptized by an Episcopal priest, but since I was 10 months old at the time my theological ponderings were limited to why this man was giving me a bath when I had just had one.

Nor, despite our shared last name, do I have any connection to Bishop Robinson. I wrote last time that he was no relation to me, and he still isn’t.

What I know about is New Hampshire, having spent most of my life there. It is, by comparison to its neighbors, a conservative state. It was the only New England state in 2000 to land in the Bush column — and, probably unlike Florida, that’s where it actually wanted to be.

New Hampshire elects a Democratic governor approximately once a millennium. It has no sales tax or income tax, giving added meaning to the state slogan, “Live Free or Die.”

And yet, New Hampshire isn’t obscenely conservative. One reason for this is the Bible Belt doesn’t stretch that far north — if it did, it would have to be called the Bible Cummerbund. In New Hampshire, gays are legally protected against discrimination. It’s a Yankee attitude that your personal business is just that. It didn’t surprise me when New Hampshire Episcopalians elected Robinson as their bishop in the first place.

Nor does it surprise me that two churches within the state are publicly resisting his elevation. New Hampshire is called the Granite State, and while I wouldn’t say New Hampshirites have rocks in their heads, I would say they can be as stubborn and unmoving as a block of the stuff.

New Hampshire was the last state to sign off on the Martin Luther King holiday. Pure cussedness that was, and purely embarrassing to many of us who lived there. New Hampshirites don’t like to be told what to do, and I imagine to many it feels like this gay bishop is being forced upon them.

But I see other factors at work. Robinson got his gold miter in early November. At that point the glorious foliage season is over and New Hampshire is knee deep in dead leaves. Winter with its various frozen horrors is around the corner. Daylight savings time has ended. It’s cold, it’s dark, it’s depressing, and you can’t go to the store without running into three presidential candidates.

Episcopalian, Jew, Quaker or Shaker, this state of affairs is going to depress you, and perhaps make you testy about enforced change.

And Granite Staters have another reason to be cranky. Last May the state’s symbol, the Old Man of the Mountain, an outcropping of rock that looked from afar like a human profile, slid clean off. How do you react when something that has been there forever suddenly heeds the call of gravity?

Maybe you view it as God’s wrath. Or perhaps you realize that even granite can give.