Paul Moore , Jr . Paul Moore , Jr . ( November 15 , 1919 – May 1 , 2003 ) was a bishop of the Episcopal Church and served as the 13th Bishop of New York from 1972 to 1989 . During his lifetime , he was perhaps the best known Episcopal cleric in the United States , and among the best known of Christian clergy in any denomination . Career . Paul Moore was a graduate of St . Paul ' s School and Yale University , where , like his father , he was a member of Wolf ' s Head Society . He had been president of the Berkeley Association , the Episcopal student group , and a Boy Scout leader at Yale . He was a member of one of America ' s richest families . Moore was senior fellow on the Yale Corporation from the mid - 1960s through the administration of George H . W . Bush . Moore joined the Marine Corps in 1941 . He was a highly decorated Marine Corps captain , a veteran of the Guadalcanal Campaign during World War II earning the Navy Cross , a Silver Star and a Purple Heart . Returning home after the War , Moore was ordained in 1949 after graduating from the General Theological Seminary in New York City . Moore was named rector of Grace Church Van Vorst , an inner city parish in Jersey City , New Jersey , in the former township of Van Vorst , where he served from 1949 to 1957 . There he began his career as a social activist , protesting inner city housing conditions and racial discrimination . He and his colleagues reinvigorated their inner city parish and were celebrated in the Church for their efforts . In 1957 , he was named Dean of Christ Church Cathedral in Indianapolis , Indiana . Moore introduced the conservative Midwestern capital to social activism through his work in the inner city . Moore served in Indianapolis until he was elected Suffragan Bishop of Washington , D . C . , in 1964 . During his time in Washington he became nationally known as an advocate of civil rights and an opponent of the Vietnam War . He knew Martin Luther King , Jr . , and marched with him in Selma and elsewhere . In 1970 , he was elected as coadjutor and successor to Bishop Horace Donegan in New York City . He was installed as Bishop of the Diocese of New York in 1972 and held that position until 1989 . Moore was widely known for his liberal activism . Throughout his career he spoke out against homelessness and racism . He was an effective advocate of the interests of cities , once calling the corporations abandoning New York " rats leaving a sinking ship " . He was the first Episcopal bishop to ordain an openly homosexual woman as a priest in the church . In his book , " Take a Bishop Like Me " ( 1979 ) , he defended his position by arguing that many priests were homosexuals but few had the courage to acknowledge it . His liberal political views were coupled with fierce traditionalism when it came to the liturgy and even the creed . In his writings and sermons he sometimes described himself as " born again " , referring to his awakening to a fervent Christocentric faith as a boarding school student . By birth , by inherited wealth , by friendships and career success , Moore was an acknowledged member of what was often called the " Liberal Establishment " , a group that included Kingman Brewster and Cyrus Vance , along with many other graduates of Yale College . He wrote three books : " The Church Reclaims the City " ( 1965 ) , " Take a Bishop Like Me " ( 1979 ) , and , after his retirement , " Presences : A Bishop ' s Life in the City " ( 1997 ) , a memoir of his life . Personal life . In 1944 , while in the Marine Corps , Moore married Jenny McKean , a daughter of Bohemian privilege reared on the North Shore of Boston and educated at Madeira School , Vassar College and Barnard College . ( Her mother was Margarett Sargent McKean , a noted painter in the Ashcan School and a follower of George Luks . ) Together they had nine children ( and , at his death , many grandchildren ) . Jenny McKean Moore published a well reviewed account of their decade together in the slums of Jersey City under the title " The People on Second Street " ( 1968 ) . During that time the family lived in the tenement - like rectory of Grace van Vorst Church on Second Street in Jersey City ( now called in his honor , Bishop Paul Moore Place ) . Jenny McKean Moore died of colon cancer in 1973 . Eighteen months later Moore married Brenda Hughes Eagle , a childless widow twenty two years his junior . She died of alcoholism in 1999 . It was she who discovered his bisexual infidelity , around 1990 , and made it known to his children , who kept the secret , as he had asked them to , until Honor Moore ' s revelations in 2008 . Honor Moore , the oldest of the Moore children and a bisexual , revealed that her father was himself bisexual with a history of gay affairs in a story she wrote about him in the March 3 , 2008 issue of " The New Yorker " and in the book " The Bishop ' s Daughter : A Memoir " ( W . W . Norton , 2008 ) . In addition , she described a call she received six months after her father ' s death from a man , identified in the article by a pseudonym , who was the only person named in Moore ' s will who was unknown to the family . Honor Moore learned from the man that he had been her father ' s longtime gay lover and that they had traveled together to Patmos in Greece and elsewhere .