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afrol News, 7 July 2004
- Desmond Tutu, the former Archbishop of Cape Town and a
Nobel Peace Price winner, has lent his name to the fight against
homophobia in Africa and around the world. The prominent South African
says homophobia is a "crime against humanity" and "every bit unjust" as
apartheid.
The former head of the
Anglican Church in Southern Africa made these statements at the launching
of the book "Sex, Love & Homophobia", published last week by Amnesty
International UK. Mr Tutu has written the foreword to the human rights
group's book.
- 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, wrote the prominent Church leader. "It is the same with sexual
orientation. It is a given," he added.
Mr Tutu says he could not
have fought against the discrimination of apartheid and not also fight
against the discrimination which homosexuals endure. "And I am proud that
in South Africa, when we won the chance to build our own new constitution,
the human rights of all have been explicitly enshrined in our laws," he
said, adding that he hoped this soon would also be the case in other
countries.
South Africa is so far the only country in the world
where the constitution guarantees equal rights non-regarding sexual
orientation. This is in stark contrast to most of South Africa's neighbour
countries, where homosexulality often is punished by the penal code. Only
recenty, a Botswana High Court ruling reaffirmed this legal
practice.
- Yet, all over the world, lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender people are persecuted, writes Archbishop Tutu. "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. We blame them for what they are," he adds.
He also
regrets the dominant view among his church colleagues. "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?" Mr Tutu asks.
Also within the Anglican Church, homosexuality is highly
controversial and an ongoing conflict has threatened to split the global
Anglican Communion. The current head of the Anglican Church in Southern
Africa, Njongonkulu Ndungane, has been an outspoken supporter of including
homosexuals in the Church community, putting himself in a strong-worded
conflict with other African Church leaders.
In its new book,
Amnesty reports on the life stories of gay and lesbian people around the
world. These include Poliyana Mangwiro who was a leading member of Gays
and Lesbians of Zimbabwe despite President Robert Mugabe's protestations
that homosexuality is "against African traditions".
The book also
includes the story of Simon Nkoli, a South African ANC activist who after
spending four years in prison under apartheid went on to be the face of
the struggle for gay rights in the new South Africa. Further, stories of
hate, fear and persecution are reported from Nigeria, Egypt and other
countries, in addition to reports from the states where homosexuality
punishable by death; including Sudan, Mauritania and some Northern
Nigerian states.
For Archishop Tutu, these "destructive forces" of
"hatred and prejudice" are an evil. "A parent who brings up a child to be
a racist damages that child, damages the community in which they live,
damages our hopes for a better world. A parent who teaches a child that
there is only one sexual orientation and that anything else is evil denies
our humanity and their own too," Mr Tutu concludes.
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