Desmond Tutu: "I would never worship a homophobic God."

All too often, CarnalNation has to cover stories about people using one god or another as a sock puppet for their own hatred and fear about sexuality. Just recently, for example, Westboro Baptist Church came to San Francisco to protest homosexuality, Jews, and Twitter; their more respectable and well-dressed cousins in the Catholic Church were embarrassed by the revelation of a gay prostitution ring in the Vatican itself; and Africa has been in the spotlight as clergy in Uganda, with the support of certain Americans, push for the death penalty for gays and lesbians. Given all that, the op-ed piece in Friday's Washington Post by Bishop Desmond Tutu condemning the rising tide of homophobia in Africa is extremely welcome. Tutu, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his opposition to South African apartheid, speaks passionately about how gay rights can not only can be a part of Christianity, but must be:

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?

From www.washingtonpost.com via clp.ly