Archbishop Desmond Tutu on the Diabolical Use of Religion to Encourage Homophobia

by Michael Jones · 2009-09-28 02:54:00 UTC
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Desmond Tutu

Live from South Africa, it's Archbishop Desmond Tutu! The Nobel Peace Prize Laureate was honored by the 2009 Vancouver Peace Summit over the weekend (he appeared via satellite from South Africa), and took the chance to call out religion and religious leaders who use their faith as a means of bashing marginalized groups.

Tutu said that religion has often been used almost diabolically to encourage such things as xenophobia and homophobia, according to the Canadian Press. In the wake of such twisted faith, Tutu said that he can understand why many groups view religion with a fair share of skepticism.

"I sometimes wonder how people could ever think that God is a Christian," Tutu said. "The spirit of God is wider than any one particular faith."

Tutu has long been a champion for equal rights. He's gone so far as to say that homophobia equals apartheid (no light-weight comparison, given Tutu's familiarity with the subject), and has been a proponent of the freedom to marry, openly calling out governments who waste their time worrying about what private citizens are doing in the bedroom instead of focusing on issues like poverty, health care, and war.

With a record like that, it's no wonder the Vancouver Peace Summit chose to honor him.

(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.)

Michael Jones is a Change.org Editor. He has worked in the field of human rights communications for a decade, most recently for Harvard Law School.
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