Tutu to Apologise for Persecution of Gays on BBC Radio Tonight

I have become increasingly impressed with retired Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu and his willingness to speak out on what he sees is the truth regardless of whether or not it pleases the knuckle draggers in some branches of the Anglican Communion. It is voices like Tutu's that will open minds and change hearts. Speaking of which, I had lunch today with a member of my church (First Lutheran Church) who is a retired professor from the ELCA's Southern Seminary in Columbia, South Carolina, and an advocate for respect and full acceptance of gays in the ELCA. He has even debated Warren Throckmorton, a sometimes fair haired boy of the proponents of the reparative therapy snake oil, at a ELCA conference (Throckmorton had been invited by conservative, homophobic factions in the ELCA). We met to discuss my frustration with some members within First Lutheran who oppose outreach to gays and in the parish's failure to be truly accepting of LGBT individuals in a public way. But I digress, here are some story highlights about Tutu's statements (http://www.ukgaynews.org.uk/Archive/07/Dec/1702.htm):

MANCHESTER, December 17, 2007 – Archbishop Desmond Tutu has apologised to gay people all around the world for the way they have been treated by the Church. The Archbishop recently criticised the church for being ‘obsessed’ with homosexuality but speaking on the only gay programme on the BBC he goes further and says he’s ‘sorry’.

The Archbishop and Nobel Peace Prize winner says “sorry” to the worldwide LGBT community in an exclusive recorded interview with Ashley Byrne, presenter of Gay Hour, to be transmitted tonight (December 17) on BBC Radio Manchester. “I want to apologise to you and to all those who we in the church have persecuted,” Archbishop Tutu says in the interview. “I’m sorry that we have been part of the persecution of a particular group. For me that is quite un-Christ like and, for that reason, it is unacceptable. “I’m sorry for the hurt, for the rejection, for the anguish that we have caused to such as yourselves.”

Previously, Tutu made similar statements in 2004 during a sermon at Southwark Cathedral in London (http://www.ukgaynews.org.uk/20040206001.htm):

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has said homophobia is, to him, as “totally unacceptable and unjust as Apartheid ever was.” And the former Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, in a sermon at Southwark Cathedral in London, fired what amounts to an ecclesiastical torpedo into the school of the Anglican Church that insists homosexuality is wrong.

“The Jesus I worship is not likely to collaborate with those who vilify and persecute an already oppressed minority,” he said. “I myself could not have opposed the injustice of penalizing people for something about which they could do nothing - their race - and then have kept quiet as women were being penalized for something they could do nothing about - their gender, and hence my support inter alia, for the ordination of women to the priesthood and the episcopate. “And equally, I could not myself keep quiet whilst people were being penalized for something about which they could do nothing, their sexuality. “To discriminate against our sisters and brothers who are lesbian or gay on grounds of their sexual orientation for me is as totally unacceptable and unjust as Apartheid ever was.”