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Episcopalian bishops at the 74th General Convention held in Minneapolis have suddenly put off a planned vote on Monday afternoon just hours before the historic vote was supposed to take place to approve the first openly gay bishop. An investigation has been launched to look into allegations of inappropriate sexual conduct against Canon Gene Robinson, reports Reuters.

The allegations surfaced just two hours before the 107 diocesan bishops of the Episcopalian church, the US branch of the Anglican denomination, were due to finally ratify the appointment of Gene Robinson as diocesan bishop of New Hampshire.

A man named David Lewis of sent an email to Vermont Bishop Thomas Ely and other bishops accusing the Bishop-elect of being a "skirt-chaser" who fondled him two years ago. Lewis is a lay reader with the local Episcopal Church.

The 50-year-old father of two from Manchester, Vermont claimed: "As outstanding as Gene Robinson may have been thus far as a priest... my personal experience of him is that he does not maintain appropriate boundaries with men... he put his hands on me inappropriately every time I engaged him in conversation. No gay man has ever behaved towards me this way."

"I believe this is an alarming weakness of character that alone makes Gene unsuitable for the office of bishop," the email, dated Sunday, said.

Vermont state Republican Judy Livingston, who said that she knows Lewis and his wife, insisted he "is not a person who would make wild accusations."

The church has taken the accusation seriously and has postponed the vote indefinitely. Friends of Canon Robinson claimed the allegations were ludicrous and voiced suspicions of a last-minute plot by conservatives to prevent his appointment going through.

In a separate allegation, Canon Robinson has been linked to Outright, a gay youth outreach group, that he had helped found years ago, had Internet links to "hard core pornography."

Officals of Outright, a network of gay and lesbian youth groups, said that they had been unaware that their web site had a link to an erotic Web site and that they had immediately removed it after being alerted to it by reporters. They also said that Bishop-elect Robinson had no role in its Web site and has not been involved with it for about five years.

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Supporters of Bishop-elect Robinson claimed he had been through a thorough vetting process during his candidacy for the bishopric, which would have discovered any inappropriate behaviour. They claimed it was highly suspicious that such claims had surfaced so late and denounced them as a desperate, last minute move to block the appointment.

The 56-year-old divorced father of two has lived with partner Mark Andrew since 1989 and lists him in his Diocese of New Hampshire biography. At the convention reported by Christianity Today, Robinson expressed frustration that some media accounts have said he left his wife, Isabella McDaniel, for his male lover. He clarified that he didn't meet Mark [his partner] until two months after his ex-wife remarried.

Some senior members of the US church and developing world bishops had threatened to break away from the New York-based U.S. Episcopal Church, which is loosely affiliated to the Church of England, if Canon Robinson became a bishop following the vote at the triennial meeting of the church's general convention in Minneapolis. Some have contemplated seeking leadership from conservative bishops in Africa, Asia and Australia, where the church is making most of its new converts.

Church liberals have however said the threat of a schism had been overstated, citing similar objections following the mid-1970s decision to ordain women that caused a temporary split, with many dioceses later returning to the fold.