Rev Robert Williams

American clergyman, the first openly gay male priest whose ordination in the Episcopal Church was acknowledged beforehand by the ordaining diocese and was consequently the subject of considerable publicity. Williams worked as a journalist in Dallas and founded a branch of IntegrityUSA, a gay and lesbian Episcopalian organisation. He graduated in 1988 with a Masters of Divinity at Episcopal Divinity School. He was ordained on 16 December 1989 by John Shelby Spong, Bishop of Newark, having publicly stated that he was in a sexual homosexual relationship with James Skelley, a divorced father of two. He was appointed as founding head of The Oasis, an outreach for homosexuals at All Saints Church Hoboken, New Jersey. In January 1990 Williams stated "Monogamy is as unnatural as celibacy. If people want to try, OK, but the fact is, people are not monogamous. It is crazy to hold up this ideal and pretend it's what we're doing and we're not," adding that Mother Teresa would have benefited from having sex. Williams was forced to resign from his ministry as a result of these and other comments he made. He embarked upon a study of human sexuality at New York University, moving to Provincetown, Massachusetts when he began suffering from the complications of AIDS. He sought to establish an Episcopalian healing ministry there in June 1991, but was denied a licence by the Rt Reverend David Johnson, Bishop of Massachusetts. He chose to run his healing ministry independently. He died in hospital in Boston on 24 December 1992 from AIDS, aged 37, survived by his partner Kevin McKowen. Link to Wikipedia biography