The daughter of Archbishop Desmond Tutu urged people to choose love over anything else in her interview with the BBC today.
Mpho Tutu van Furth talked to the BBC’s Nomsa Maseko about how it felt to give up her priesthood licence after her marriage to Dutch academic Marceline van Furth, an atheist who also works for the Tutu foundation. She is ‘still a priest in good standing’ in her home diocese in the United States.
Although South Africa legalised same-sex marriage in 2006, the Anglican Church in South Africa still does not permit it. Mpho Tutu van Furth said this did not reflect either the congregation or priests:
‘The reality is that not only do we have gay, lesbian, transgender, people of every description, sitting in our pews, to be perfectly honest, we have all of those people standing in the pulpit. Yet very often they sit in fear in the pews and they stand in fear in the pulpit because they are not free to fully own who they are and who they love.’
She ended the interview with some very good advice:
‘Always choose love. Everything else will fall into place somehow.’