Desmond Tutu Speaks Out for LGBT Rights

"Hate has no place in the house of God. No one should be excluded from our love, our compassion or our concern because of race or gender, faith or ethnicity -- or because of their sexual orientation."

So writes Nobel Peace Prize winner and anti-apartheid activist Archbishop Desmond Tutu in an editorial that appeared in the Washington Post on Friday. Tutu compares the current wave of homophobia sweeping Africa to the South African system of Apartheid, which denied native Africans their civil rights by creating a separate and extremely unequal social system.

Tutu continues, "Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people are part of so many families. They are part of the human family. They are part of God's family. And of course they are part of the African family. But a wave of hate is spreading across my beloved continent. People are again being denied their fundamental rights and freedoms."

Tutu calls on church and political leaders to end the persecution of LGBT Africans, "But they are sinners," I can hear the preachers and politicians say. "They are choosing a life of sin for which they must be punished." My scientist and medical friends have shared with me a reality that so many gay people have confirmed, I now know it in my heart to be true. No one chooses to be gay. Sexual orientation, like skin color, is another feature of our diversity as a human family. Isn't it amazing that we are all made in God's image, and yet there is so much diversity among his people? Does God love his dark- or his light-skinned children less? The brave more than the timid? And does any of us know the mind of God so well that we can decide for him who is included, and who is excluded, from the circle of his love?

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