Tutu on homophobia and injustice

by Feòrag

South Africa: Desmond Tutu, the retired Archbishop of Cape Town, has condemned anti-gay discrimination, comparing it to the apartheid system he helped overthrow. In the introduction to a new Amnesty International book, Sex, Love and Homophobia, he wrote:

We struggled against apartheid in South Africa, supported by people the world over, because black people were being blamed and made to suffer for something we could do nothing about -- our very skins... It is the same with sexual orientation. It is a given. I could not have fought against the discrimination of apartheid and not also fight against the discrimination that homosexuals endure, even in our churches and faith groups.

He saved his harshest criticism for those who would blame God for their own bigotry:

All over the world, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are persecuted. We treat them as pariahs and push them outside our communities. We make them doubt that they too are children of God -- and this must be nearly the ultimate blasphemy, he wrote.

We blame them for what they are. Churches say that the expression of love in a heterosexual monogamous relationship includes the physical, the touching, embracing, kissing, the genital act -- the totality of our love makes each of us grow to become increasingly godlike and compassionate. If this is so for the heterosexual, what earthly reason have we to say that it is not the case with the homosexual?

Desmond Tutu: Homophobia as unjust as apartheid—Gay.com News, 1st July 2004.

Tags: apartheid, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, homphobia, South Africa