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KATHI WOLFE
Friday, June 27, 2008
The connection between sexual identity and Judeo-Christian values is fraught with complexities, which are explored in detail in “The Bishop’s Daughter: A Memoir” by poet Honor Moore. The searing chronicle lays bare the dual life of her father (and its impact on her), the late Paul Moore, Jr., a closeted bisexual Episcopal bishop of the Diocese of New York.
Born in 1919 as the beneficiary of robber baron wealth (his grandfather was a founder of Bankers Trust), Paul Moore served as a Marine during World War II and was awarded a Purple Heart. He was ordained in 1949 and shortly afterwards met his first wife, Jenny McKean (the mother of Honor, born in 1945, and his other eight children).
Throughout his long career, the bishop became renowned for his stance on social justice issues — marching with Martin Luther King, Jr., opposing the Vietnam War and even ordaining the first lesbian Episcopal clergy in 1977.
Weeks before his death from cancer in 2003 at age 83, the bishop denounced the Iraq war. “It appears we have two types of religion here,” Moore said, referring to America. “One is a solitary Texas politician who says, ‘I talk to Jesus, and I am right.’ The other involves millions of people of all faiths who disagree.”
Despite the public acclaim for his ministry and liberal stances, Paul was conflicted about his sexual orientation. He supported the passage of gay rights laws in New York City and in 1986 preached at a memorial service for people who had died from AIDS.
Yet, though he had a loving, 30-year relationship with a man named Andrew, Moore viewed “homosexual love” as “something else,” Honor Moore writes, believing that “the sacrament of marriage sanctified the relationship between a man and a woman.” She adds, “as my father lived his sexuality with men, it was … something that moved beneath the surface of the life he lived with his wives, his children, with parishioners, with colleagues; something … in the charged realm of desire, of imagination … informing his theology and his compassion.”
HONOR AND HER SIBLINGS learned of their father’s bisexuality after his second wife, Brenda Hughes, who died in 1999, discovered his relationships with men. This revelation prompted Paul to end his relationship with Andrew, writing a letter to him at one point saying, “I wish I could see you, but I can’t — such is life.”
After Brenda died, however, Paul connected with his lover again, Andrew told Honor six months after her father’s death. “Your father had desire right up until the end,” Andrew said to her, “it was hard to keep up with him.”
Parallel to the story of Paul’s struggle with his sexuality is Honor’s account of her own sexual confusion.
“I came to understand that my own sexual development was inextricably tied up with my father’s complicated erotic life,” she writes. Honor, whose poetry was influenced by lesbian feminist poets such as Adrienne Rich, had relationships with men before dating women and then returning to men.
As with her poetry collections, Moore’s writing is erudite and lyrical in “The Bishop’s Daughter,” yet, the tome seems overwritten — perhaps because the daughter’s story takes up so much of the volume. It’s not that we don’t care about Honor, but it’s the impact that homophobia had on a major 20th century religious figure that remains the stronger story and the ultimate reason for reading the book.
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