Knocking Monogamy

It took two years of screening before New Jersey's controversial Bishop John Spong approved J. Robert Williams, 34, as the first Episcopal man to be ordained a priest while openly living in a gay relationship. It took six weeks for the bishop to decide the ordination was a big mistake. Williams has now been forced out of his job at a gay ministry while the diocese investigates whether he misrepresented his moral beliefs.

Williams' downfall resulted from his remarks at a Detroit symposium on gay marriages: "Monogamy is as unnatural as celibacy. If people want to try, O.K., 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." Having thus dismissed the traditional concept of Christian marriage, Williams told a questioner in rather crude terms that Mother Teresa of Calcutta would be better off if she had had sex. All that was too much even for Bishop Spong, who also wants to overturn Judeo-Christian sexual limitations but encourages "committed" relationships, gay or straight, with lifelong monogamy as the ideal.

Williams apologized for belittling Mother Teresa but stuck by his anti- monogamy stand. He plans to defy the bishop's request to cease all priestly activities until the case is settled. Says he: "If ((Spong)) wants to spend another quarter-million dollars, he can take me to trial." And speaking of trials, conservative Episcopalians are planning to file charges against Bishop Spong himself for ordaining an active gay.