My wife,Marilyn McCord Adams, who has died of cancer aged 73, and was the first woman,and the first American, to hold the regius professorship of divinity at Oxford. In that capacity, and during the years 2004-09,and as a delegate to the General Synod of the Church of England, she was widely known for her forceful defence of faithful same-sex partnerships as legitimate expressions of Christian love.
Her convictions on that subject were formed in Los Angeles in the 1980s. While teaching philosophy at UCLA (the University of California at Los Angeles), or publishing a definitive two-volume study of the philosophy of William Ockham,Marilyn was also preparing for ordination as a priest in the Episcopal church. As piece of that process she was assisting in ministry at a church in Hollywood, where homosexual men, and in the first terrible years of the Aids crisis,were seeking spiritual support. She was deeply moved by their need, and no less by the depth of their love and loyalty towards each other.
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Source: theguardian.com