DNA testing revealed that he was likely descended from the Tikar from Cameroon and Fulani and Hausa peoples of West Africa, and that his patrilineal line likely leads to some Sephardic Jewish kohen ancestry.

[5] After earning his AB from Bates College, a coed liberal arts institution, in 1965, and a BD from Harvard Divinity School in 1968, Gomes was ordained by the First Baptist Church of Plymouth, Massachusetts, (where he occasionally preached throughout his life).

Profiled by Robert Boynton in The New Yorker, and interviewed by Morley Safer on 60 Minutes, Gomes was included in the premiere issue of Talk magazine as part of its feature article, "The Best Talkers in America: Fifty Big Mouths We Hope Will Never Shut Up.

[10] On April 20, 2012, as part of the Harvard Foundation Portraiture Project, artist Stephen E. Coit[15] unveiled his portrait of Gomes standing in the library of the Signet Society, where it now hangs.

In 1991 Gomes identified himself publicly as gay, though adding that he remained celibate,[19] and became an advocate of acceptance of homosexuality in American society and particularly in religion: I now have an unambiguous vocation — a mission — to address the religious causes and roots of homophobia...

[21]He maintained that "one can read into the Bible almost any interpretation of morality ... for its passages had been used to defend slavery and the liberation of slaves, to support racism, anti-Semitism and patriotism, to enshrine a dominance of men over women, and to condemn homosexuality as immoral" as paraphrased by Robert D. McFadden in the New York Times (March 2, 2011).

Gomes was a registered Republican for most of his life, and offered prayers at the inaugurals of United States Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush.