The synod, which is the Church of England’s national assembly, voted to send the covenant to its dioceses for consideration.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has backed the covenant despite calls by liberals to reject it.
Several speakers said it would create a “two-tier” Anglican Communion.
Under the covenant each of the 38 provinces of the Communion would be invited to sign the covenant.
It is expected to return to the general synod for consideration in 2012.
The covenant was first mooted in 2003 after Gene Robinson, an openly gay man, was chosen as bishop of New Hampshire in the US amid uproar from many in the Anglican Communion.
Dr Miranda Threlfall-Holmes, a chaplain at Durham University, told the synod meeting in Westminster: “We are told that the covenant sets out a framework for family relationships but what sort of family draws up a covenant with ‘relational consequences’ for breaches of the rules?
“To me, this text sounds rather like a couple in marital difficulties deciding to ask their wider family to vote on whether they should divorce or not.”
The Bishop of Lincoln, the Right Reverend John Saxbee, said Anglicans would be forced to “stand in the corner until they have seen the error of their ways and return to the ranks of the pure and spotless”.
The Right Reverend Michael Perham, Bishop of Gloucester, said he was voting for it partly to support Dr Williams and added: “Not to vote for it is to make more difficult the task of the Archbishop of Canterbury in his ministry to the Communion. I want to strengthen, not weaken his hand.”
Dr Williams explained the need for the covenant: “We are trying to understand what it is to be properly accountable to each other.
“We are not ruling out innovation and we are not attempting through the covenant to declare in advance the impossibility of this or that development.”
The Reverend Simon Cawdell, from Bridgnorth, Shropshire, supported the covenant. “As a community, we sometimes have periods of time when we become dysfunctional, there are arguments, there are disputes, which need to be worked out between us,” he said.
“The covenant seeks to provide a way in which these disputes about our own life can be resolved in love.”
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