| From: |
Manuella Donato [ profile ] |
| Subject: |
Desmond Tutu on homophobia in Africa
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| Sent: |
Jan 27th, 2011 - 14:25:52 |
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http://www.africaso.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=151%3Adesmond-tutu-on-homophobia-in-africa&catid=39%3Aarchived-news
*Desmond Tutu on homophobia in Africa
*
*In Africa, a step backward on human 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. Nor should anyone be
excluded from health care on any of these grounds. In my country of South
Africa, we struggled for years against the evil system of apartheid that
divided human beings, children of the same God, by racial classification and
then denied many of them fundamental human rights. We knew this was wrong.
Thankfully, the world supported us in our struggle for freedom and dignity.
It is time to stand up against another wrong.
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. Men have been falsely charged and
imprisoned in Senegal, and health services for these men and their community
have suffered. InMalawi, men have been jailed and humiliated for expressing
their partnerships with other men. Just this month, mobs in Mtwapa Township,
Kenya, attacked men they suspected of being gay. Kenyan religious leaders, I
am ashamed to say, threatened an HIV clinic there for providing counseling
services to all members of that community, because the clerics wanted gay
men excluded.
Uganda's parliament is debating legislation that would make homosexuality
punishable by life imprisonment, and more discriminatory legislation has
been debated in Rwanda and Burundi.
These are terrible backward steps for human rights in Africa.
Our lesbian and gay brothers and sisters across Africa are living in fear.
And they are living in hiding -- away from care, away from the protection
the state should offer to every citizen and away from health care in the
AIDS era, when all of us, especially Africans, need access to essential HIV
services. That this pandering to intolerance is being done by politicians
looking for scapegoats for their failures is not surprising. But it is a
great wrong. An even larger offense is that it is being done in the name of
God. Show me where Christ said "Love thy fellow man, except for the gay
ones." Gay people, too, are made in my God's image. I would never worship a
homophobic God.
"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?
The wave of hate must stop. Politicians who profit from exploiting this
hate, from fanning it, must not be tempted by this easy way to profit from
fear and misunderstanding. And my fellow clerics, of all faiths, must stand
up for the principles of universal dignity and fellowship. Exclusion is
never the way forward on our shared paths to freedom and justice.
The writer is archbishop emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa. He won the
Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.
--
Manuella Donato
Regional Focal Point - Latin America
Global Youth Coalition on HIV/AIDS
Gonçalves Maia, 1000/103. Recife, PE. Brazil
+55 81 99244408 | manuella (at) gyca.org
www.gyca.org | www.tigweb.org
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