Last Updated on October 28, 2024 by Kittredge Cherry
Archbishop Desmond Tutu was a Nobel Peace Prize-winning South African activist for racial and LGBTQ equality. He was born Oct. 7, 1931 in Klerksdorp, in the South African state of Transvaal.
Tutu famously fought apartheid, but he also worked passionately to support LGBTQ people and all human rights. He can be considered the world’s most prominent religious leader to advocate for LGBTQ rights.
He became the first black bishop of Johannesburg in 1985 and a year later the first black Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town. But his impact was global.
“I would refuse to go to a homophobic heaven,” he said in 2013. “No, I would say, ‘Sorry, I would much rather go to the other place.’ I would not worship a God who is homophobic and that is how deeply I feel about this. I am as passionate about this campaign as I ever was about apartheid. For me, it is at the same level.”
Tutu helped South Africa become the first nation in the world with a constitution outlawing discrimination based on sexual orientation. His outspoken support put him in conflict with many other African leaders and church officials.
During the struggle to end the systematic racial segregation of apartheid, openly gay activists such as Simon Nkoli convinced movement leaders that racism and homophobia were interconnected. Based on this history, Tutu and others lobbied for South Africa’s new Constitution to protect LGBTQ people. It included a non-discrimination clause listing sexual orientation along with race, gender and other traits when the new Constitution became law in 1996. A decade later South Africa became the sixth country on earth to legalize marriage equality.
Tutu has defended LGBTQ people at least since the 1970s, long before his daughter Mpho Tutu van Furth came out publicly as a lesbian. She is a priest, but the Anglican church in South Africa forced her to surrender her clergy credentials when she married her wife in 2006. She remains an Episcopal priest in good standing.
He emphasized that he opposed discrimination based on sexual orientation “with the same passion that I oppose apartheid” in a video for Free and Equal, the United Nations campaign for LGBT equality.
“We are made for loving. If we don’t love, we will be like plants without water,” he said.
Desmond Mpilo Tutu died on Dec. 26, 2021 in Cape Town from cancer at age 90. His death fell on the first day of Kwanzaa, a week-long celebration of African American culture.
Meeting Desmond Tutu: A personal memory
I met Archbishop Desmond Tutu at the World Council of Churches Central Committee meeting in Johannesburg in 1994 as part of the Metropolitan Community Churches delegation. Our MCC group showed up as uninvited observers to advocate for LGBTQ rights in the church, and Tutu was a strong ally. I remember his lively spirit and powerful speech supporting human rights. It was an honor to shake his hand in a receiving line afterward.
Kittredge Cherry shakes hands with Archbishop Desmond Tutu in 1994.
During his speech I was thrilled when he actually mentioned lesbian and gay people among those who need protection from hate and discrimination. This was long before the acronym LGBTQ was coined — and just three months before the first election when South Africans of all races could vote. Homosexuality was still “the love that dare not speak its name” and none of the other WCC officials were willing to say even one word about gay and lesbian people. Tutu’s support meant a lot.
Desmond Tutu in art and books
A 2021 portrait by North Carolina artist Jeremy Whitner shows Archbishop Desmond Tutu with a rainbow halo to emphasize his role as an LGBTQ ally. It appears at the top of this post. Whitner is a gay Christian mystic in process for ministry with the Disciples of Christ.
An excellent resource on Tutu’s supportive relationship with the LGBTQ community is the 2021 book “Reimagining Christianity and Sexual Diversity in Africa” by Adriaan van Klinken and Ezra Chitando. The first chapter is devoted to Tutu. It is titled “Race and Sexuality in a Theology of Ubuntu: Desmond Tutu.” He and Mercy Oduyoye were among the first black African theologians to describe how progressive Christianity can help the quest for sexual justice. Tutu developed a theology based on Ubuntu, a Nguni Bantu term for humanity that means “I am because we are,” implying mutual responsibility and compassion.
Van Klinken has posted the full chapter on his website. The conclusion of the chapter sums up the impact of the amazing archbishop: “Tutu’s contribution to the debate about sexuality in contemporary Africa is a major one. His prophetic commitment to defending human dignity, equality and justice continues to inspire and set an example to many people across the world. Although other parts of Africa have not experienced apartheid, they have experienced colonialism and the systematic racism inherent to it, thus making Tutu’s equation of racism and homophobia powerful across the continent. Furthermore, with his theology of ubuntu he allows for a conceptualisation of sexual diversity that is meaningful in African contexts and that enhances the human flourishing of gay and lesbian people as part of their communities.” (pages 23-28, published by Hurst and Co, London).
Tutu helped put unbuntu theology into practice in the South African Constitution and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He chaired the commission that held hearings on human-rights violations and offered reparations after the end of apartheid. The archbishop wrote about that experience in a bestselling book whose title sums up his philosophy: “No Future Without Forgiveness.”
Prayers
In honor of his passing, this line was added to Q Spirit’s Litany of Queer Saints:
Saint Desmond Tutu, South Africa’s strong LGBTQ ally who taught that racism and homophobia are connected, pray for us!
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Top image credit:
“Archbishop Desmond Tutu” by Jeremy Whitner
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This post is part of the LGBTQ Saints series by Kittredge Cherry. Traditional and alternative saints, people in the Bible, LGBT and queer martyrs, authors, theologians, religious leaders, artists, deities and other figures of special interest to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people and our allies are covered.
This article was originally published on Q Spirit on Dec. 31, 2021, was expanded with new material over time, and most recently updated on Oct. 28, 2024.
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